those soft questions aren’t serving anyone

Call Her Daddy and the state of journalism in an anti-intellectual society.

Thanks for reading! Please leave a like, a comment, or share this post if you enjoyed it.

---

In light of Chappell Roan getting yet another target placed squarely on her back for her continued annoyance with fans who come up to her and people looking to her to share her thoughts on the current state of affairs, I stumbled upon another white woman taking hits for what we may or may not deem a justifiable offense: Alex Cooper’s journalism skills.

Call Her Daddy’s YouTube banner.

I must confess, I do not listen to Call Her Daddy, Cooper’s very popular podcast, on which she’s had some very high-profile interviews from Vice President Kamala Harris during what was crunch time on the campaign trail to Rachael Kirkconnell speaking out about her breakup with Matt James, an exclusive that I must say, I was eagerly awaiting TikTok clips of. Since 2018, Alex Cooper has been building her platform and brand whilst “[cutting] through the BS with topics and guests - asking the burning questions you want the answers to.” I fear many people beg to differ about that last part.

Call Her Daddy is definitely entertaining, considering its popularity and my occasional moments of being sucked in to the more exciting clips, but I’ve never listened to a full episode, and haven’t made a plan to, because I know that show is not meant for me. Despite its being described as “the most-listened to podcast by women,” I think it’s built for a very specific, less-melanated woman.

The main qualms with the podcast that I’ve seen online, specifically outlined in this TikTok from Zachary (@theeswiftologist), are that Cooper’s interview strategy is more interested in making the guest into a new bestie rather than getting a good scoop and pushing the guest to reveal new, interesting information. In other words: listeners don’t seem to finish the episode knowing any more information about the guest than they did before.

Calling Cooper “the worst interviewer in media right now,” Zachary cites examples from her interviews with Avril Lavigne and Chappell Roan wherein Cooper asks questions that lightly tap at the surface and center herself, internet rumors and nostalgia, rather than asking probing questions that provide new information about their work and their processes and keeping the focus on the guest. He follows up by stating that these interviews are more like chats between friends, which is fine in a show that is branded as a chat show, but Cooper has branded Call Her Daddy as serious journalism, and it falls short.

At the end of the TikTok, Zachary gives an example of a similar show, Hot Ones, wherein guests are asked really well-researched questions (that consistently catch them off guard because no one has asked them questions about those topics before) while they eat gradually spicy wings with host Sean Evans. Another insanely popular show that’s not necessarily intense journalism, but always delivers because of Sean Evans, a very good journalist.

One of the comments on Zachary’s TikTok from user Gabby reads: “her podcast being seen as high journalism is very indicative of the rise of anti-intellectualism tbh.” Anti-intellectualism, as described by Brittany Luse, host of the NPR show “It’s Been a Minute” is the “hostility and mistrust towards academics, experts and education.” Therefore, this commenter is claiming that Alex Cooper’s interview technique being heralded as “good work” is made possible because experts at journalism and the discussion of popular culture are considered less valuable (and less trustworthy) in an anti-intellectual society.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone is looking to Alex Cooper or Call Her Daddy to do more than learn something new about a musician, actor or celebrity that they like, but when Cooper gets an interview with Kamala Harris, it’s clear that someone is considering her a talented-enough journalist to handle a very important interview at a very important moment. Plus, if you only listen to Call Her Daddy, your expectations for what makes a good interview are likely going to be impacted by how Cooper interviews.

So––to take it to a bit of an extreme––if you then listen to an interview on Fox where they throw layups and soft questions at their incredibly divisive guests, you might think that that guest has been put through the test and come out victorious. Conversely, if you then watch a real interview where the guest is uncomfortable because they’re being asked to defend things they’d rather not have to defend, then you might get frustrated at the interviewer for asking hard questions instead of at the interviewee for being unable or unwilling to answer.

Distrusting the people who want to disrupt the status quo and ask necessary, uncomfortable and disruptive questions is part of anti-intellectualism. As Yale professor, Dr. Jason Stanley says in an episode of NPR’s “It’s Been a Minute,” during a conversation about the anti-intellectual pushback against studying the humanities in higher education, “What happens in the university is critical inquiry into the status quo. And so if you can attack that and represent it as somehow deviant or decadent, then you can go back to representing critique of the status quo as something terrifying… The humanities allows you to talk about anything, and that's a threat - the idea that you can talk about anything.”

Therefore, softball questions and chit chat journalism feed into the status quo because they don’t disrupt it. Their goal is comfort above all else, rather than getting to the story, or in some cases, the truth. And so in what may be considered a cultural moment of anti-intellectualism, it makes sense that interviewers like Alex Cooper would be getting opportunity after opportunity. Meanwhile, journalists who refuse to go along with what the ruling power considers the status quo are no longer welcome, and those who will play along replace them.

Another example of this version of journalism could be when Bill Burr was asked on a red carpet by a reporter from nickballasy.com to clarify his thoughts on Luigi Mangione and on the protests against Elon Musk. Burr was visibly annoyed at the questions and told the reporter “I don’t think you should be asking a comedian. You’re a journalist.” The reporter responded by saying that comedians are “on top of current events,” to which Burr said “That’s weak. That’s you guys passing the buck. You guys need to have balls again, which you don’t.”

I do think there’s some truth to comedians having their finger on the pulse and being able to articulate truths in a disarming way, but Burr is right in the sense that journalists shouldn’t necessarily be asking him about Elon Musk when they have the ability to ask Elon Musk himself about what he’s doing, or to ask the people close to him. I like to hear what people I support have to say about current events, but I don’t look for their quotes in an article I’m reading about current events. There’s a difference.

Considering how quickly the U.S. is slipping –– has slipped –– into very dangerous territory, it’s imperative that our news outlets uphold their journalistic ethics and integrity. I have no illusions about where Call Her Daddy or nickbalussy.com rank on the list of reputable outlets, but Call Her Daddy has 1.21 million subscribers on YouTube and incredible reach and cultural value, and that TikTok of Bill Burr has been liked nearly 100,000 times. It would be naïve to believe that these examples bear no weight in what audiences consider to be quality lines of questioning.