These are temper tantrums, not arguments

Oh, this is painful. Was Neil Cavuto’s painful interview with a college student activist fair game? by Callum Borchers.

By now, there’s a reasonable chance you’ve seen Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto’s interview with Million Student March organizer Keely Mullen. It was all over the Internet in recent days -- and particularly the right-leaning portion of said Internet, which delighted in a liberal college student struggling to explain how giving everyone free college would be paid for.

The exchange was, in a word, uncomfortable.

Cavuto began by giving Mullen the floor to lay out the demands of her group, which orchestrated student walkouts at 110 college campuses last Thursday. They were: free tuition at public universities, the cancellation of all student debt and a $15-per-hour minimum wage for all campus workers. Cavuto then asked Mullen how to pay for all this.

“Um, great question,” Mullen replied.

It was almost instantly apparent that Mullen was in over her head. She seemed flustered and unprepared. She seemed like, well, a kid.

You read the phrase, "deer in the headlights", but you can see it at the 40 second mark. Borchers is exploring the question about culpability. Was it unfair or mean of the interviewer, Neil Cavuto, to proceed with the interview? As a journalist, did he have a responsibility to shield the interviewee, Keely Mullen, from her own incapacity to support her argument?

She volunteered for the interview. As both Borchers and the commenters point out, Cavuto was not being either aggressive or manipulative. He was simply asking for her to support her argument. In doing so, it was immediately clear that she had absolutely no clue about how to make her argument. The students knew what they wanted but they could not articulate why it was important, how much it would cost, who should pay, or why they should pay.

I think Cauto was right to proceed with the interview. These are adults making claims. It is important to realize that 1) they are a small minority of the student body, certainly no more than 5%, and probably more like 1%. 2) They may be adults but they have no idea what they are talking about. These are temper tantrums, not arguments. They should be treated as such.