Everyone has that one bootlicker at work, someone who will do anything to even be acknowledged by the boss. These people are often annoying, untrustworthy, but at the end of the day harmless really. But bootlicking is a widespread disease in capitalist society, and the more it reaches, the more damage it does.
One occupation that is rampant with bootlicking is that of the interviewer. Now it may be unfair of me to really blame an interviewer for this. To have your interviewee really bare themselves to you and show a side of them typically unseen, one must bootlick a little. But there's a fine line in my opinion, and a place and time of course.
For instance, Andrew Callaghan is one of the best interviewers I have watched and this is because of the technique he describes as “radical listening”. This technique is essentially him gently acknowledging and encouraging his interviewee, so they will continue. This usually makes it so that the person continues to rant and share whatever they are so eager to say. Due to the nature of Andrew’s interviewee’s this is useful. He wants to show the absurdity of those he interviews, he wants to allow for a deeper look into some of the American subcultures he explores.
That example is not bootlicking, it is a tactic to make for the best possible interview in a specific context. But say you are to do this in an interview with a politician, CEO, or person of significance, it can become bootlicking, quickly. And in these scenarios, bootlicking can become harmful, to like society as a whole, or at least the working class.
To prove this rather convoluted point I want to look at an interview done by J.J McCullough. J.J is a Canadian youtuber who makes videos that critique/comment on Canadian/north American culture and aspects of it. On the surface his videos are pretty innocuous and generally just seem like any other commentator on YouTube but with more Canadian tones (Perhaps forcing a little Canadian tone). But at times his content can lean a little right or conservative, this is because J.J was previously a political pundit for the conservative party in Canada.
Similar to any other pundit, J.J can’t help but have is conservative leaning show face. Now I don’t really think this is a big issue at all, his videos are fine and generally his political leanings are just regular middle class conservative shit. Sure he can kind of shill for the conservative party at times but he gives a fair share of criticism as well, which I appreciate.
But I do have an issue with his interview with Pierre Poilievre. Pierre for those who do not know is the current conservative party leader in Canada and is positioned to be the favorite to win the next election for prime minister. Pierre has had a successful campaign on social media in part because of interviews like the one done with J.J.
This interview begins with J.J in his usual video setting, explaining what he hopes to achieve with this interview and well who he is interviewing. He gives a summary of Pierre’s life and political career which leaves out some interesting details. Such as his involvement in the Reform Party in his teenage years, a party which had a strong anti-gay marriage stance. But as some have their radical leftist phase in college, Pierre had his radical homophobe phase, I digress.
J.J then goes on to butter up Pierre for his audience through a description of his rise to “fame” that was akin to a game day breakdown of a star player's journey to the top. Even calling him a Rockstar of sorts. After this the actual interview begins where a giddy J.J meets Pierre in his office on parliament hill.
Now up till now some bootlicking has already occurred, but nothing that dubious. As this interview continues it becomes clear that J.J is not there to question and understand Pierre’s politics and policies, but rather to act as a megaphone for Pierre, no rebuttal, just yes sir, sorry sir, more please sir. This can be seen in the questions and response, or lack thereof by J.J in the actual interview.
Question 1: Why were you picked to be conservative leader and what do you represent?
Pretty normal question, Pierre responds by saying he wants to give people back power through smaller government and bigger citizens and then blames Trudeau for Canada's recession and general state of being. This is some typical populism and libertarianism by Pierre here and just some classic conservative talking points. Talking points that all Canadians have heard a politician say towards their opponent.
Now as an interviewer personally I would ask how would you do this, what specifically is wrong in Canada, and how will a smaller government help this and so on. Vague talking points do not allow for any viewer to actually understand Pierre, all they understand is the talking points his team wrote down for him. We may as well just be watching one of his commercials.
Question 2: Is it fair to say you are more conservative than those other leaders (I assume he means conservative leaders here, but could mean other party leaders)?
This answer is a great example of Pierre’s ability to appeal to an extremely wide range of voters. He somewhat disagrees with J.J’s question and talks about how conservative you are is a subjective thing and he just wants small government, big citizens and rambles on about that, kind of avoiding the question. In my opinion this is brilliant by him, because Pierre has to appeal to some of the more right wing voters due to his association and sympathy for the trucker protests. But he wants to maintain his appeal to libertarian’s who may be socially more progressive. Pierre understands that those truly radical right-wingers in the voter base are already going to vote for the PPC and appealing to them is not worth losing the “Centrist” voter base. So he would rather poach the few radical right’s that he can while maintaining appeal to the centrist libertarian types.
Many of Pierre’s critiques point to his crypto shilling, support of the convoy and general sympathy for the far right as to why they think he is unfit to lead. You can see here that Pierre is attempting to move away from this image of himself in preparation for the national election in 2025.
As Pierre’s political skill shows here I think J.J’s bootlicking begins to shine as well since he does not follow up in any meaningful way to the answer. In this instance Pierre basically avoids his question and goes on to repeat his talking points, push him on this J.J, why wouldn’t you? Ask him if he falls to the left or right on certain policy points, such as climate change, abortion, immigration, and health care. Ask him what he thinks his smaller government will mean for public services and where spending will be cut back, don’t allow him to dance around questions while throwing in talking points as he pleases.
Question 3: What motivated you when you were young to get into politics and what issues were at the forefront at the time?
This answer by Pierre is pretty insignificant with him talking about Canada's national debt in the late 90’s and how he wants to give individuals a chance to determine their own goals. He goes on to say how he felt it was unfair to have Canada's national debt in the 90’s passed onto his generation. Hmmm wonder how he feels about climate change then, seems a bit unfair to me? But of course J.J doesn’t see this inconsistency in Pierre stances.
Question 4: So you never had a left-wing phase?
Now J.J would know that Pierre had a right-wing bigot/homophobic phase if he just did a full rundown of Pierre's past. Pierre does further establish his libertarian beliefs by saying he came to the conclusion that people should just make their own decisions.
He also talks about how he read a book about Fidel Castro and did not become a communist, pretty insignificant and I doubt he did honestly, but I am just being petty at this point.
Question 5: You are seen as a sort of post-covid politician, why is this message so successful, and what do you think the effects of covid were on the political landscape?
Pierre talks about how politicians took advantage by expanding their own power and blames Trudeau for raising taxes, introducing censorship laws, and unscientific policy regarding vaccines and he just wanted to diminish the rights of citizens.
So Pierre is clearly against the changes to taxes Trudeau has made, and blames those on inflation. So, let’s take a look at some of these tax changes. In 2022 there has been a couple of tax changes that I think Pierre is referring to.
First, is of course the infamous carbon tax, which was increased this April to now cost buyer’s approximately 11 cents per liter of gasoline. This does at the end of the day cost working class people a decent chunk of change, and it is coming at a really bad time with gas prices already soaring due to the war in Ukraine and the cabal that is OPEC artificially inflating prices worldwide. I do have some criticisms of the carbon tax and its implementation, but I will save these for an article of its own. In conclusion this tax is costing working class people more money and does not allow a reasonable route for working class people to use less carbon.
Next is the tax increase for the Canadian Pension Fund (CPP) and employment insurance (EI). These cost in total around 200$ per paycheck for the everyday working class person, and 250$ per person per paycheck for employers. Being against this tax is anti-working class. This tax goes directly to providing a critical social safety net for millions of Canadians, and better yet takes back some money from your employer who is exploiting you through underpaying your true value. So, though dividends are not seen immediately from this tax increase, but in the long run is benefiting working class Canadians.
That is the tax increases seen in 2022 by the Trudeau government, and honestly it is ridiculous to blame this solely for inflation. Inflation is occurring due to a global pandemic that is still active in many parts of the globe and a war between two developed countries. Canada is being hit hard by this inflation because corporations, companies, and employers are trying to maintain exceedingly high profit margins so the cost of goods are rising. Also it is very hard to effectively cut costs for residents of Canada due to a reliance on vehicles due to a lack of public transportation systems and a reliance on fossil fuels for heat.
Finishing up on this question Pierre talks about the censorship laws and vaccination policies introduced in the last year. Uhm, this piece is getting longer than I wanted and I really don’t feel like discussing vaccination policies. But bill C-11 is probably bad but many people are forgetting that companies already push certain content to us despite what we actually want, and regulation should be put upon them regarding this essentially free advertising.
Overall, I want this question and response by Pierre to show how he is glancing over very complex issues, and how J.J provides absolutely zero context to anything Pierre is saying. Allowing him to paint a broad gloom picture over policies that actually benefit Canadians and over simplify ones that are complex and misguided.
Question 6: Are you the candidate of choice of the truckers?
Pierre gives the typical ramble about how the message being sent by the protests were good and he supports all of the peaceful protesters.
Now the truckers are an interesting topic for Pierre to discuss. Mainly because he is directly on the fence on it, like taint straddling the wood. Because on one hand it is almost exclusively right wing voters who are a part of the trucker protests. But some of them are uhm to say it lightly nazi sympathizers. So, he carefully states that he supported all peaceful protests and continues on to sympathize with them. This is very similar to how you see Trump blow dog-whistles to far-right members of his base. Now I am not calling all of the trucker protestors far-right, but there is certainly far-right tendencies amongst the groups that conducted this and many far-right theories and talking points are repeated frequently amongst these groups. Such as ideas of grand conspiracy by the government to poison us all, great replacement theory or white replacement theory, as well as deep transphobia to the point of direct harassment.
Honestly this question and answer really reveal how much Pierre is taking plays out of Donald’s play book.
Question 7: 2025 election is approaching, what will you be running on?
Pierre uses this softball question to pounce on inflation once again. He kind of just repeats some talking points and says he wants to increase paycheck power, saying that we have lost spending power in our paychecks. Which is true, but I would say the main factor for this is the fact that the average wage for a Canadian worker has gone up by 3-4 dollars or about one fifth since the 1990’s and corporate profits have multiplied by 9 since 1990’s. So I would say that is the main reason we have lost purchasing power. Pierre instead insists that it is taxes and government spending that has caused this.
All I really have to say about this answer because Pierre is starting to repeat himself a lot.
Question 8: You are succeeding with young voters, why do you think this is?
Pierre’s explanation for this is that young people have felt restricted the past two years and had their lives completely altered and they see him as antithetical to this. They also see him as the answer to the problems young people face such as lack of home ownership, paycheck power, jobs, and overall future.
So, once again I do not have much to comment on this answer because yes obviously he is seen as antithetical to covid because he opposed nearly all covid lockdowns. What I must ask is, was every covid lockdown bad? Do people really think we needed none of them, sure maybe the final one or two was excessive but at some point we must except that covid was (And truthfully still is) dangerous, especially since we had zero fucking idea what is was capable of at the beginning.
Also he says you couldn’t hike which is just completely wrong but whatever, clearly neither J.J or Pierre cares if what is said is truthful.
Question 9: What is the biggest misconception about you?
Pierre literally has no answer to this. I think this is important because Pierre recognizes that by addressing some of the misconceptions (or truths) about him would put these criticisms in the mind of the viewer. By not bringing them up the viewer will never know about his homophobic past, anti-working class policies, crypto shilling and climate change denial.
Once again a masterclass by J.J on how to bootlick and provide zero resistance whatsoever during an interview.
Question 10: Bill C-11, state clearly where you stand on it?
Pierre responds with a resounding against and says that this bill allows for large companies to sway algorithms in their favor and manipulate what the public views. This is true, and I think the bill is misdirected and bad in general. But I can’t help but think, isn’t that what happens already?
Companies pay billions of dollars to study and understand exactly what will keep you on and engaging with each social media site. Pierre claims this effort at least ends up with you seeing what you want to see, but that is not true. Companies know that showing you the thing you want to see least, keeps you on longer. They want to show you things that will anger you, upset you, and keep you on to look for something that will calm you down or fuel your rage further. Or they will show you anything that will release even the smallest amount of dopamine for you. You are never shown what you want, just what will keep you on.
Shouldn’t regulations be put on these companies to prevent them from using us to maximize information gathered and ads viewed on these websites. The least that could be done is make these algorithms more transparent rather than a mystery.
I think this bill is at the minimum opening up a discussion about how content online is delivered to us but Pierre nor J.J were interested in this.
J.J ends this video by telling his audience that he hopes this interview helped people understand who Pierre was and how he speaks, which J.J explains will be very important for his campaign. This statement perfectly sums up this interview for me.
Yes J.J, this interview does a great job of showing how Pierre talks, but that is about it. There are no follow up questions, fact checks, or even mild push back or inquiry in this interview. It is simply soft ball questions for Pierre so he can use your platform as a microphone for his populist talking points that over simplify and misrepresent the issues facing Canadians.
Now I must admit I have been pretty harsh towards J.J and his interviewing ability. I can’t blame him really, there are very few interviewers who actually show any pushback to the interviewee’s. This is mostly because of the access journalism that has kind of taken over mainstream media journalism. I think why I am so annoyed by this interview is because independent creators such as J.J offered an opportunity to reshape what we consider normal in interviews with powerful people.
Despite politicians moving to content creators for media coverage rather than mainstream TV the nature and execution of this coverage has not changed. Politicians continue to say something without saying anything and creators such as J.J are being willful bootlickers.
The misrepresentation and over simplification of issues in Canada allows for working class Canadians to continue to be exploited. Politicians and their teams have manufactured these talking points to say as little as possible whilst still satisfying as many voters as possible. These talking points are only meant to trigger voters, not to inform them.
If we do not know what is happening in our country and just continue to listen to the people who caused these issues with zero critical thinking or hesitancy as long as they are on our side of the political spectrum then we will continue to get fucked by politicians and corporations with no Vaseline (or consent).
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