2017-03-11

OK, Look; or, My Ramblings on the BBC Interview Interruption

I'm writing this post on a Friday night because I have a deadline looming ahead this coming Tuesday, and I know that this weekend is going to be unpleasant. And because I only posted once in February and I'm thinking that it's going to be a similar situation in March, I'm just going to take this moment to bust out something for the month and also procrastinate at the same time. I never did dislike killing two birds with one stone.

So, this morning my alarm goes off at 6:50 AM, like it does every day (which, may I remind you, is still 10 minutes earlier than in the song "Skid Row"). I'm snoozing it and tossing and turning because my neck and shoulders have continued to hurt since the night before. Before the alarm goes off a second time, I receive a link to a BBC story about how a BBC interview with a Korea specialist was interrupted because the interviewee's kids walked into the interview room.

I've clearly got nothing better than do (except, perhaps, to actually get myself out of bed), so I click on the link and watch the video in bed. And, I don't know about you, but it horrified me in a very strange way.

Today I had meetings back-to-back and then was hounded by my impending doom/deadline, so I haven't had a chance to read/see what others have said about the video clip. But, to me there are just so many things wrong that happen in the clip.

So, you're an academic and have spent years writing and teaching about a certain topic. Then the country that happens to be your research site has a political scandal, and you're tapped by the BBC for an interview on the topic. (I'm not sure if this is the case for our BBC interviewee, but I speculate.) Hey, if that happened to me, I'd just figured I'd made it and drop the mike right then and there.

But gosh darn it, your kids have to walk into the room and screw it all up.

But, but. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't try to push the kid out of sight, skillfully looking only at my computer screen, which captures both my BBC interviewer's image and my own (and my room that also now includes my child/children). I'm also pretty sure I wouldn't be sitting in a room that had books laid out in strategic locations, because my books like to live very crampedly in my actual bookshelves, where I believe books belong.

I'm pretty sure that if my kid walked into the room, I would give myself an immediate face palm, laugh bitterly, apologize to the BBC interviewer, and, seething, ask my five-year-old to go back to the kitchen and continue to color her freakin' coloring book, as I had instructed her to do about seven times that morning at breakfast.

I'm pretty sure that if my partner frantically burst into the room, crawling on all fours to collect our little tykes, I'd at least thank her (albeit ironically) for handling the situation for me. As in, I would at least acknowledge her existence.

I think. I'm pretty sure.

And you know what? If I were being interviewed by the BBC and my kid walked into the room and I shoved the kid to get her out of my built-in FaceTime's sight, I would probably get called a bad mother. A horrible mother. An inhuman(e) mother. And I'd also probably get called a bad academic, because I'm not professional enough and I can't get my shit (i.e., my family/kids) together.

I wonder what others have said about the clip so far. I imagine there are others who feel similarly. I imagine I'm not the only one who doesn't find humor in that clip. It's just too bad I don't have time this weekend to be reading up on this here trending topic.