The press does what?

The current administration evidently not being frightened by An Inconvenient Truth, one wonders what would be the plot of a horror movie which would frighten them. Setting aside any such juvenile speculation as whether they would be horrified by a movie about gay marriage, or would rather watch it under the covers with the lights off ¹, one can only imagine that perhaps the most terrifying plot they can imagine is one concerning the reporter who wouldn't stop asking questions. A recent Metafilter thread on persistent reporters pointed to a collection of examples of the species -- but the examples had been put together by someone who appeared to have a considerable ideological axe to grind, and the thread derailed into a discussion of the rightness or wrongness of the ideology, as opposed to the adulation with which we should shower diligent members of the press. Fortunately, though, someone gave a link to a more appropriate example in the ensuing comments.

The first clip linked featured my new hero Jeremy Paxman asking a reluctant guest the same question twelve times; of this I have little to say aside from -- aaah.

The second clip showed what happens when Jeremy meets Ann, and I was a little disappointed with it -- much as I hated, even beyond her ideology, the simpering sneer with which she met any questions, I thought Ann Coulter had a valid point: Aside from hoping to shame her by forcing her to stand up in public to the things she wrote in her books, what is the point of reading her passages she wrote (or at least cared enough to copy) and asking her if she agrees with, or believes in, them? Not for me this clip -- Ann Coulter is so ridiculous, and has been demolished so many times without seeming even to realise it, that I despair of either reason or vitriol having any final effect on her (which, nonetheless, doesn't stop me from eagerly watching clips like this in the hope that this time, surely ...). What I found interesting, though, was this snippet which occurred 4:26 into the linked video:

[Children] are baptised in the religion of liberalism for 6 hours a day ², 12 days a week.

Those liberals -- not content with ruining the country, they're ruining our calendars, too!

UPDATE 11 August 2006: Apparently, the world (England especially -- no surprise, I suppose) hungers for discussion, any discussion, of Jeremy Paxman and Ann Coulter. About 40% of my hits since writing this entry have been visits just to it, most of them coming from Technorati searches. Welcome, folks! -- and while you're here, why not visit the stunning panoply which is the other twenty-some posts on this blog? (Please, don't answer that.) Maybe I'll even go back and watch the video to see if I can say anything intelligent about it, as opposed to snarking at slips of the tongue.

¹ I know this is a phrase better suited to describing illicit book-reading than illicit movie-watching, but, in this time of portable DVD players, it is certainly possible.
² My school days were 7 hours long. Maybe she considers that kids are safe from being baptised in the religion of liberalism for 1 hour around the time they say the Pledge of Allegiance.