There is an interesting thread starting at PrawfsBlawg initiated by Rob Vischer of St. Thomas (MN). Rob asks which talk show host best exemplifies your teaching style. He aspires to Charlie Rose, but admits to a little bit of Oprah.
This is probably a dangerous — or at least an awkward — topic for a blog read by a professor’s students. Someone may think themselves Tim Russert but be perceived as Rosie O’Donnell. In any event, most of us cannot be what we want to be all of the time. I may wish I to be Jim Lehrer or Bill Buckley, but have days when my inner Bill O’Reilly or, God forgive me, Larry King comes to the fore. I have even caught myself channeling Phil Donahue.
I acknowledge and bewail my manifold sins and wickedness, which I, from time to time most grievously have committed against your divine majesty . . . .
Maybe it’s not such a good topic after all.
This blog posting took me on a very entertaining trip through my past professors to assign them with t.v. personalities. I certainly won’t say which professor matches which television personality, but rather than talk show hosts and news anchors, I started seeing similarities between my professors and PBS program and Food Network hosts.
I definitely have been taught by a Norm Abram-type from This Old House; someone who takes apart the law and rebuilds it from the ground up so I could see the reason and policy behind it. And I’ve experienced the Rachel Ray-type from 30 Minute Meals; someone who is passionate and enthusiastic about students and the law and needs to slow the heck down so we can all keep up. And then there is the zen-like Priscilla Patrick-type from Therapeutic Yoga; a prof who teaches students to use the law to heal communities, relationships and to not be afraid of feeling a feeling once in awhile. And there of course is the Emeril-type professor; BAM! here’s the law! BAM! here’s the final! BAM! here’s your grade! BAM! BAM!
Overall, the diversity of my legal education has been a great experience. Thanks for the post.
My initial reaction to Rob Vischer’s question is to say that to compare law professors with talk show hosts is to misconstrue the essence of law teaching (or at least traditional law teaching).
Most talk show hosts flatter their guests — that is what keeps the guests coming back. True, the early David Letterman was able to flatter his guests in ways that were actually quite insulting, but no current talk show host (including Letterman) engages his guests in the demanding way that characterizes the best law teaching. (If a law professor starts to resemble Bill O’Reilly, he is ranting, not teaching.)
Does anyone remember Morton Downey, Jr. (or Dr. Mort as he was known on WLS-Radio)? He had a moment of fame and notoriety in the late 1980’s as an unusually abrasive TV talk show host. Say what you want about Mort, he wasn’t afraid to challenge the legitimacy of his guests’ most deeply held views, and his response to every good answer was to belittle the speaker and ask another, even more confrontational question. Unlike the sewer pipe known as Jerry Springer — who in some ways is Mort’s successor — Mort didn’t dwell on the perversions in the human heart, but focused on political and cultural questions of broad significance.
Morton Downey was a terrible talk show host. His TV act got old fairly quickly, and his show was canceled. However, with a little more polish and a bit more human decency, he might have made a pretty good law professor.