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Transcript of Babcock's Interview with Erna
Call it petty, but
our Dhimwit of the Month honor for May finally goes to one of the
little people, Jay Babcock, the classless editor of
Arthur Magazine.
Perhaps pulling down this prestigious award will raise the profile
of Jay and his obscure publication, which is based in Northern
California and bills itself as a “high-quality” collection of
commentary and interviews that focus loosely on the world of music.
Before finding a
relatively wealthy patron to subsidize “his” magazine, Jay Babcock,
was a freelance writer who “struggled with the business end” and,
not surprisingly, lived on credit card debt. Quite honestly we
don’t know much more about him, although we suspect that his
hygienic habits are somewhat less than superior. His honor as a
dhimwit this month is based on an
ambush interview
that he laid on Sully Erna, the frontman for a heavy metal band
called Godsmack.
Godsmack may be
best known for their breakout single, “Whatever,” although more
people would recognize the instrumental lead-in to the song “Awake”
since it is the background music for a U.S. Navy commercial that has
received a good bit of media airplay in the last few years. The
band publicly supports the troops and has played several benefit
concerts.
And this is where
they went wrong in the eyes of Jay Babcock.
Babcock, it seems,
is one of those Americans who indulges in his country’s comfortable
lifestyle without regard for the sacrifice that makes it possible…
the ultimate slacker who seeks to mold other slackers. For example,
one of his questions for Sully was whether the singer has any songs
that “prevent people from joining the military.” Naturally he also
opposed the U.S. led effort that liberated Iraqis from Saddam
Hussein’s brutal dictatorship.
Although the
interview was scheduled under the pretense of discussing the band’s
top-selling album (a good topic of conversation for a struggling
rock magazine), the real purpose was for Babcock to showcase his own
deep sense of self-righteousness.
The anti-war
argument is too simplistic to withstand even competition, so its
proponents find success only in talking amongst themselves or by
launching a surprise attack on an unsuspecting, unprepared
opponent. A dupe who thinks he’s calling in to talk about music
makes a perfect target for this sort of sucker punch.
Aside from
strategically leading Sully into agreeing that music has power, in
order to use this against him later in the 5-minute interview,
Babcock displays a level of creative shallowness that is somewhat
remarkable given that he has both the element of surprise and the
luxury of adequate preparation on his side.
In fact,
considering that his opponent is a barely-educated rock star who
probably just awoke from a drug-induced slumber to find himself
halfway through a debate that he didn’t even know he was having,
this episode in Jay Babcock’s life will be remembered more for his
having made one of the dumbest remarks that we’ve heard come out of
anyone’s mouth since 9/11.
After insisting
that “no one is attacking us,” the morally superior magazine editor
says that “Every first world nation suffers terrorist
attacks. Get used to it.”
You hear that,
World Trade Center families? Get used to it! Don’t resist the next
one, just endure it.
These could only be
the words of a man who is quite confident that he will never be a
victim of terror. And, statistically speaking, he probably won’t
be. Even if a 9/11 happened every day, only one out of 300
Americans would die each year, meaning that the average citizen
would have about a 75% chance of not being killed by terrorists
during a normal lifespan.
But these are also
the words of a man who is lacking either common sense or compassion…
perhaps both, considering his cursory argument against the war.
Babcock says that we have no right to change the government of
another country, because we wouldn’t want them to “do that to us” –
meaning America. But he makes no distinction between dictatorship
and democracy, which is not the way things work in the real world.
Much like money,
people don’t mind political power changing hands as long as they
wind up with more of it. Iraqis may have plenty of complaints about
the terrorists that kill thousands each year, but no one (other than
Jay Babcock) is asking for Saddam to be put back in power.
Reading from his
script, the editor goes on to say that “30,000 Iraqi humans” have
died because of the attacks. But if this jackass bothered to do the
math, he would realize that these humans were dying at a rate that
was five times higher under Saddam. If Babcock were truly concerned
about the lives of Iraqis, then he would support the Iraqi and
American security forces that are trying to stop the
criminals who are actually doing the killing… like Sully Erna
is.
Using ambush
tactics and deception to make a half-awake rock musician appear
unprepared to defend himself might be the sort of intellectual
achievement that Jay Babcock beats his chest over, but we think that
Sully held his own rather impressively under the circumstances,
while the editor’s own prepared remarks were both insightful and
bizarre.
The one other
notable point in the interview is when Babcock suffers a ‘deer in
the headlights’ moment when Sully has to ask the editor (three
times) what magazine he represents. It’s as if both men suddenly
realize at the same moment that this isn’t exactly ‘Rolling Stone’,
which, aside from being recognizable, knows how to conduct
interviews with class. The transcript doesn’t do justice to
Babcock’s bumbling reaction.
He’s no Hunter S.
Thompson, but clueless Jay Babcock, who says we should just get used
to terrorism, is our Dhimwit of the Month.
Go back to the List of Islamic Terrorist Attacks
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