What Makes Them So Prickly?
Do famous people have an innate right to be prickly? Let me define by way of an example: When an average citizen attending a town hall meeting asked powerful Barney Frank chair of the House Financial Services Committee how he thought it possible to add 30 million people or so to the health care roles and not increase the cost or decrease the service, he responded “what planet do you spend most of your time on?” That’s prickly -- and it usually happens when the big deal who is suppose to be the expert gets a question they don’t want to answer. It’s known on the street as “copping a-tude.”
Some Other Famous Pricklers
Donald Rumsfeld coped-a-tude about almost everything during his tenure as Secretary of Defense including how he let Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.
Alan Greenspan copped-a-tude when asked if it was his policy of deregulation that made possible the out-of-control trading of toxic assets that almost ruined our country.
And of course there is the most prickly interview perhaps of all -- Vladimir the Impaler who lined the road leading to his castle in the mountains of Transylvania with impaled bodies so that by the time you arrived for the audience all the questions you had about taxes etc. dissolved into “I just came up to tell you what a great job you’re doing.”
In golf Tiger Woods can be a prickly interview. A few years ago a TV commentator who had a reputation of ‘I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em’ made some comments on Tiger’s new swing and to teach him a lesson Woods refused to give interviews with the announcer, a big time threat to his career. Shortly thereafter the announcer fell into line with all the other “speak not a word of evil about Tiger” and the Tiger Correct interviews now composed of “softball questions” resumed. Vlad would have been proud of Tiger.
Now that Tiger has some non-golf problems it will be interesting to see how prickly he remains.
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