On podcasts this week, guests included a congressman from Arizona and an Assistant Attorney General in the US Antitrust Division. What stood out to me was that in each podcast, the guests avoided answering tough questions by using what I think of as “marketing speak”, “double-talk” and “word salad”.
The congressman stuck to tired party-lines when asked about immigration, a study questioning the effectiveness of cloth masks vs. Covid and a case of 5 police beating a man to death last month. Often, in response to a question, his answer were talking points about subjects that were not even tangentially related to the question or exaggerated straw man examples.
The Assistant Attorney General was questioned about the US Antitrust Division’s lax enforcement of antitrust regulations, its weak record of busting up monopolies and if it has plans to go after certain industries. He kept trying to spin the track record by saying what they are attempting to do in the future. When pinned down for specifics, he fell back on “I can’t confirm or deny we’re investigating that” and “we believe in free enterprise and fair markets”.
Nobody buys this.
The podcast hosts pressed their guests for specifics and called them out on their attempts to duck questions, obfuscate and spin.
The listeners (me and I assume most others) could smell the obvious bullshit responses from miles away.
So why not try something different? Be honest. That would be refreshing.
Imagine if the attorney had said, “You know I can’t publicly make statements against the Attorney General’s policies regardless of whether I agree or disagree with them. Are you nuts? I work there. I need my job!”
Or the Congressman said, “Actually, I have no idea about that. Furthermore, I’m not going to buck the party line because if I do, they won’t fund my re-election campaign and will tank any of my district’s pet projects.”
The listening audience, the podcast hosts, the people you are “protecting” and the general public know this already.
You aren’t fooling anyone.
Not even yourself.