No he doesn’t. Mike says nothing of the kind.
Mike
Mike is an unfortunate individual. He has been chosen by a BBC News reporter to Represent Public Opinion ©. He is being asked to give a personal analysis on the subject of the Republican nomination debates, and he does so. Sadly, however, Mike does not appear to be quite up to this daunting task, and the title quote is basically what the BBC reporter, who had too little time to interview anyone else, could extract from his garbled answer. What Mike really says:
I’ve got no idea and I’m not sure if this debate is going to help me get to the bottom of this. I think Christmas is a pretty good analogy – we know it comes every year on December 25, but there aren’t very many people who shop throughout the year for Christmas, but there are a lot of purchases made at the end of the year.
There are those people in the year that will shop early and there are those that will wait for that mad rush. I’m probably one of those mad rushers. If you talk to my wife she would confirm that for you.
Poor Mike! He gets so confused that the Christmas shopping is all he can think of. The journalist, meanwhile, displays sloppy attitude by not carrying out a follow-up interview with Mike’s wife. Can she really confirm his story?
The present press attitude of relying too much on public opinion, by the by, has been brilliantly analysed in Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe. See the episode in question here (comes in three parts).
Meanwhile, to help you out in case a news reporter inadvertently asks YOU for your opinion, here are some examples of what to say:
- It wasn’t me, I swear. Go away!
- It’s all the fault of the French! Coming over here, stealing our bananas, currency and traffic signs! The UN Security Council should take firm measures.
- Well, yeah, obviously. I’ve been expecting this to happen for years. It’s a shame really. Nobody listens to me. And I have so much to say.
- A very fair comparison to make would be to compare the present situation, compare it, as it were, with the situation as was present during the Hundred Years War. Actually that comparison is not so easy to explain, so I’ll use another example, which will quickly make our present situation understandable to all. It’s comparable to the war that led to the Battle of Mühldorf, you know. You have Ludwig on the one hand – Lewis the Bavarian, if you will – and the other fellow, Frederick of Austria, I think it was, though don’t quote me on this -on the other. And there’s a war that could have been avoided but wasn’t and it should’ve been but then there’s the battle and it’s over and the Pope has to change his tune. Yeah?
