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New Ayn Rand Interview Up on Youtube

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The stupidity of Donahue makes me cringe. It's seems like when he doesnt understand something he tries to speak over and get in Rand's face to intimidate her into compromising, but gets frustrated when it doesn't work.

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I don't think Donahue was that bad.

I thought he seemed genuinely interested in listening to what Rand had to say, was a good interviewer, and treated her respectfully.

The audience members were the irritatingly stupid ones.

Edited by Myself
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That was good, except for the contradiction she allowed herself on gender. Her argument against a woman president is emotional and makes no sense whatsoever. I think she was so invested in being anti-hippie she allowed herself such parochial mistakes.

Still, the only thing really imperfect about her was her heart (the physical one.) :lol:

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The stupidity of Donahue makes me cringe. It's seems like when he doesnt understand something he tries to speak over and get in Rand's face to intimidate her into compromising, but gets frustrated when it doesn't work.

Yet, for some strange reason, they liked each other.

In a 1979 show, the subject of religion came up and Phil asked the questioner "Whose god..." Rand said to him "That is why I like you" without limits,attributes, conditions or modification or any comment at all and he said he liked her. Now I can't picture her being so shallow as to let religion be the sole criterion of whom she liked or she would have preferred Leonid Brezhnev to Reverend Ike, whom she said she liked. or for that matter, she would have preferred Marx or Lenin to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Now this is passing strange since in the middle 1980's Donahue took the Soviet side in the Nuclear Freeze, even working as a comrade of Vladimir Posner as a propagandist. Besides which he's got a 25 year reputation as being a looney leftist. His 75 degree list to port couldn not have happened overnightski after 1982.

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In a 1979 show, the subject of religion came up and Phil asked the questioner "Whose god..." Rand said to him "That is why I like you" without limits,attributes, conditions or modification or any comment at all and he said he liked her. Now I can't picture her being so shallow as to let religion be the sole criterion of whom she liked or she would have preferred Leonid Brezhnev to Reverend Ike, whom she said she liked. or for that matter, she would have preferred Marx or Lenin to St. Thomas Aquinas.

Which 1979 show? How many times was she on Donahue?

According to IMDB she was on twice, once in 1979 and another time in 1980.

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The stupidity of Donahue makes me cringe. It's seems like when he doesnt understand something he tries to speak over and get in Rand's face to intimidate her into compromising, but gets frustrated when it doesn't work.

I don't think that his interviewing style represents his actual thoughts and personality. I was too young to watch Donahue growing up, but he seems to assume a kind of doofusy devil's advocate position to guide the conversation.

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The stupidity of Donahue makes me cringe. It's seems like when he doesnt understand something he tries to speak over and get in Rand's face to intimidate her into compromising, but gets frustrated when it doesn't work.

I think considering the fact she was opposing ideas that his whole life is based on he took it pretty well and actually continued to think and try to understand.

I think the audience and Donahue have a different method of thinking and have different premises to understand her philosophy in such a short time. For example, you can't talk about god before you established the proper method to gain knowledge ("you are not called upon to prove a negative").

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If I remember correctly I think someone had said that Carson's estate owned the interview. So who knows what might become of it for some years. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Of course I'd love to see it as well.

Edit: Actually according to this Carson's "episodes that aired from 1962 and 1972, were erased to save on storage costs". And ARI states that she appeared on the show 1967.

However the recent book "Objectively Speaking" says it has both (apparently she made more than one appearance?) interviews. That seems to be the only option.

Edited by IchorFigure
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If I remember correctly I think someone had said that Carson's estate owned the interview. So who knows what might become of it for some years. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Of course I'd love to see it as well.

Edit: Actually according to this Carson's "episodes that aired from 1962 and 1972, were erased to save on storage costs". And ARI states that she appeared on the show 1967.

However the recent book "Objectively Speaking" says it has both (apparently she made more than one appearance?) interviews. That seems to be the only option.

There was a poster here a year ago who claimed he'd just seen her Johnny Carson appearance (don't know which one). I don't know what happened to the guy, but he was going to look into the whole issue.

Here is the thread:

http://forum.ObjectivismOnline.com/index.p...t=0&start=0

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Edit: Actually according to this Carson's "episodes that aired from 1962 and 1972, were erased to save on storage costs". And ARI states that she appeared on the show 1967.

According to wikipedia, the first VTR (ancestor of the VCR) was out in 1965, so someone might have saved it.

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Donahue seemed to change and become much more favorable to her as the interview progressed.

I learned two things from the interview:

1. She explained why she refuses to answer certain kinds of questions: Because the questioner is gratuitously insulting her and she refuses to sanction that kind of behavior.

2. She clarified why she would not support a woman as commander-in-chief of the armed forces: Because of the nature of female sexuality, a woman could not be happy ruling over all the men with whom she associates. So a woman who would accept such a position would have to be self-sacrificing, thus immoral, thus unworthy to be a leader.

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The stupidity of Donahue makes me cringe. It's seems like when he doesnt understand something he tries to speak over and get in Rand's face to intimidate her into compromising, but gets frustrated when it doesn't work.

I am sure it was just theatrics. Donahue comically exaggerated all of his responses to everyone.

In any event, his style made Rand look better. If you had never heard of Ayn Rand before, which would impress you more: a Rand who was able to answer all of a friendly interviewer's questions, or a Rand who made it through an extremely aggressive interview?

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This was a real pleasure to view. Thank you. I think Donahue did a good job; he had apparently researched his subject pretty well, and posed just enough of a challenge to Ayn Rand to elicit her interest and intensity. Admittedly I haven't seen all of it yet, as I've got limited bandwidth, but it does seem as if he put himself up as a benevolent strawman.

[interesting, as I was watching this, I had Oprah on in the background, and couldn't help thinking how Rand would have handled her. The Queen of Liberalism and Spiritualism and her adoring audience would have gone into a permanent state of shock!]

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Regarding the Carson interviews, they're in Objectively Speaking and they're really quite good. Carson and Rand had quite the report together, it seems. He seemed much more respectful throughout than Donahue does here.

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  • 3 years later...

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