The interviewer was asking the questions that their viewership wanted asked: The questions that were being asked in the conservative blogoshpere, the one-star amazon reviews from people who hadn’t read the book, the yahoo news comments. These people were not interested in the ideas inside the book, they wanted the author confronted about his audacity and his heresy.
They gave their audience what they came for. The people watching the clip on youtube and complaining about the interview are not their audience.
Yes, I also thought that was a rare laudable moment for Fox. In the late stages of the election, Karl Rove was blustering that Ohio shouldn’t have been called yet for Obama, offering up some unlikely scenarios as justification. Anchorwoman Megyn Kelly then asked him, “Is this just math that you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better? Or is this real?”
The walk down to the stat nerds’ room may have been over the top but the question posed to Rove was a wonderful moment. As was the inevitable mournful confirmation by the stat nerds that Rove was barking out his ass.