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November 7, 2005

Did I say "falafel"? I meant "you're welcome"

Doug Gordon is making the talk show rounds to promote his new book The Engaged Groom, which radically proposes that planning a wedding should be a "joint venture" between a man and woman (no word on whether he wants us to help with the cooking and cleaning too). For real, do not let Carrie and Charles find out about this or their heads will explode.

But anyway, in preparing for a spot of Fox News, Doug recalls a post I wrote in preparation for an NPR interview, about how a guest should reply when the host says thank you. You may recall that my efforts at creativity backfired when it turned out that the host actually read my blog. Doug is looking for ideas, though I think he's off to a good start on his own: "I'm thinking some variation of 'It was my pleasure,' 'Glad to be here,' or, depending on the path the interview takes, 'George Bush doesn't care about black people.'"

Posted by Daniel Radosh

Comments

If you have the New Yorker DVD set, there's a really good article by Michael J. Arlen dated Jan. 3, 1977, about the whole complicated nexus of being hosts and guests on TV, especially talk shows but also newscasts. Actually, even if you don't have the DVD set, it's still true. Who's a host? Who's a guest? Does "hospitality" even apply here? Etc.

*BOOM*

I apologize for not blogging about it, but I did think about this precise issue and your post when I was on the radio last night. I wimped out with the standard "Thank you for having me."

It turns out the producer is editing together my interview with clips and VO, so I never had to prove my end-of-interview skills. It will wind up being more of a produced piece than an in-studio interview, so the producer asked the last question and then said, "Okay, we're done. Thanks."

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