Jordan Peterson on Q&A tonight (25 Feb 2019)

[roar]

Petersen is no idiot and he does have some worthwhile arguments but he can come across as a tool, as can his detractors when discussing issues with him.

It is a real shame we won't get the conversations that could have been extremely interesting.

[Skids]

[David]

Ah, ****, they’ve got Van Badham on too. My (already low) interest in watching just dwindled to zero.

https://www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-25-02/10811138

[Woods]

Oops, had air time as 8:30pm in my OP. But actually on at 9:30pm (have edited the OP).

I see that transgender former senior army officer Catherine McGregor is a panelist as well. I hope someone tells Peterson that McGregor is a biological male. Peterson sometimes invokes women's menstrual issues and the advent sanitary technology we he discusses the history of female emancipation. Won't strike a chord with McGregor who's batting with the full kit.

[Wokko]

Peterson has said that the inclusion of McGregor is a set up. Didn't anyone tell him that unless you're a champagne socialist's darling, hairy feminist or Labor apparatchik the whole thing is a set up?

[HAL]

Didn't anyone tell him that unless you're a champagne socialist's darling hairy feminist

[Pies4shaw]

Noon cares, HAL, because the only purpose of Q&A is to create an ambush. Of course, from all of these panellists’ perspective, any publicity is better than none, so they’re engaged in a mutual brain-sucking endeavour.

[HAL]

OK. Who or what is all of these panellists’ perspective a publicity is better than none so they’re engaged in a mutual brain-sucking endeavour?

[Wokko]

This will probably be the first Q&A I've watched in years but we'll see if I can make it past the rudeness, cutting off, gotcha attempts and bias. I've got his book but haven't read it yet because the Carlton supporting woman of the house borrowed it as soon as I got it in the door.

The fact that P4S and I are in total agreement is the real news here

[Wokko]

[David]

Okay so I couldn’t help myself, lol. Here’s my impression of the 40 minutes or so I’ve watched:

As if to prove my complaints about modern TV right, Tony Jones seems to have basically turned into an invigilator telling everybody that they can only have exactly one minute to make their point. Not his idea, probably, and I know moderating a live show can’t be easy, but someone needs to break it to him that hearing a host go “one minute, one minute” over and over again doesn’t make for great television. Anyway, what’s the rush? Maybe opt for fewer audience questions if it’s a problem?

As for the panellists...

Jordan “Kermit” Peterson: I’m not a fan of his work and this episode didn’t endear him to me any further, but I can at least see why people like him – he does offer careful and nuanced answers to questions, and seems to have a well-thought-out and sophisticated worldview. The trouble is that that worldview is deeply reactionary, something that was very evident in his response to the question about collective action vs personal responsibility. It might sound vaguely compelling to go all Michael Jackson “Man in the Mirror” about social change, but to tell people to sort their own lives out before attempting to address urgent global issues is just an argument for maintaining the status quo or worse. Nobody will ever be individually “worthy” of a progressive political movement. Honestly, for someone who complains about totalitarianism, he really does have a keen grasp on what dictators and authoritarians want from their subjects. Also, while the Milo ambush was a bit of a cheap shot on Q&A’s part, it would have been nice to see him do something other than grovel in response before that race-baiting has-been. You were right the first time, Jordan... (Also, I hope he’s embarrassed now about referring to McGregor’s presence on the panel as a “set-up” when she echoed a lot of his ideas and defended his right to be there.)

Alex Hawke: Demonstrated a point made by, I think, Greg Jericho a couple of weeks ago that all of the moderates have been chased out of the Liberal Party and replaced by fundamentalist ideologues. Couldn’t do anything but dumbly repeat that “feminism has gone too far” without even being able to articulate what the movement’s current aims might be or what areas of inequality might remain on either side. At least Jones called him out on his whining about there being subjects we can’t talk about – a guy who’s currently in government, with a platform to say whatever he likes, in a country whose commercial media is run almost entirely by fellow right-wing ideologues. Not only disingenuous, but boring and deeply stupid to boot.

Van Badham: such a phony – she goes on about neoliberaliam being a disaster, and then devotes every second Guardian column to worshipping at the feet of arch-neoliberals Bill Shorten and (a couple of years back) Hillary Clinton while steadfastly attacking anyone even marginally to the left of them. And while I didn’t disagree with everything she said tonight, her response to the young man’s question about male suicide and family courts just demonstrated his point – she didn’t even pay it lip service by, say, evoking the cliché du jour of toxic masculinity; instead, she went off on a tangent about intersectionality that had nothing to do with the question. Also, apparently condescendingly stroking fellow panellists is fine!?

Terri Butler: It always pains me to compliment Labor politicians, but she was the best panellist by far – really great answers to most questions and, in a rarity for politicians on the panel, came across as measured and thoughtful rather than shrill and opportunistic. I don’t think I’ve heard her speak before, but after this I’d much sooner have someone like her in the ALP leadership team than the current lot of grifters.

Catherine McGregor: She seems pretty intelligent and you can see why she’d make a great policy advisor, but unfortunately just isn’t really suited to a program like this – her answers were always long-winded, often wishy-washy and just rambled on and on without seeming to address the question (I felt like she might get there eventually, but there was no chance that Jones the time nazi was going to let her). Got a couple of good points in but mostly just seemed a bit out of it, frankly.

[Jezza]

Peterson was a class above the rest of the panel. I don't know what you saw in Butler, as I thought she was condescending towards Peterson.

Agree with you that Tony Jones' time limit moderation was annoying. It's part of the reason why the mainstream media is declining because ideas cannot be discussed extensively and are only glossed over the majority of the time. If anything, ABC should either have less questions or expand the show for an extra hour.

That's why more people are gravitating to alternative media sources to discuss and listen to ideas that barely get an in-depth analysis in the MSM.

[Wokko]

Would've been a much better panel without the condescending Labor woman, annoying as **** Marxist trashbag on the end and Liberal dude who at least seemed to have the self awareness to know that Peterson was a class above (at one point he said "I'll give my minute to Professor Peterson").

The Milo question was such an obvious gotcha attempt as was having Catherine McGregor but funnily enough she agreed with JP's 'controversial' opinions on legislating transgender pronoun use.

Not sure what show you watched though David, progressivism is a hel of a drug.

[Woods]

[K]

"Yet Peterson’s commitment to unfettered free speech is questionable. Once you believe in a powerful and malign conspiracy, you start to justify extreme measures. Last July, he announced plans to launch a website that would help students and parents identify and avoid “corrupt” courses with “postmodern content”. Within five years, he hoped, this would starve “postmodern neo-Marxist cult classes” into oblivion. Peterson shelved the plan after a backlash, acknowledging that it “might add excessively to current polarisation”. Who could have predicted that blacklisting fellow professors might exacerbate polarisation?"