Of Jihads & Stupid Jokes

Rich Johnston pointed out how there was an uncomfortable exchange in an interview with Paul Cornell, conducted by Benjamin Ong Pang Kean over on Newsarama. The exchange (and almost all posts referring to it) later disappeared.

No explanation. No apology. Nothing.

Rich got his hands on a print screen of the bit.


After Cornell finished an answer that indicated Faiza (the muslima character he's created in his upcoming series) will not be a stereotype and is a character that he will do his damnedest to avoid cliches with (religious or otherwise), BOPKean's next question was:

NRAMA: Did she join this team with motives of her own? Is she on a jihad mission, going on an all-out holy war against...what?

Knowing how a lot of these interviews go, it is entirely possible that Kean sent a bunch of questions via e-mail at the beginning, so that his follow-up question would not have been informed by the response to the previous question. Still...the exchange finished up with:

PC: You *what*?! I typed something much ruder in answer to that originally. What the hell?

NRAMA: Oh blimey! We're all doomed!

That right there is why I think the interviewer was just colossally stupid, rather than a bigot. I fully believe that the jihad question was just asked out of ignorance or an attempt at frat boy level humor. There's evidence to back that up...namely the fact that he left the idiotic question, the angered answer, and the frivolous and inappropriate wrap-up comment in the final article he sent into Matt Brady.

Someone who was less ignorant of or oblivious to the situation would have e-mailed an apology to the creator and a few new questions to give a better wrap-up to the article. This guy sailed on with a bliss that can only come from complete ignorance to the ugliness he caused by answering the question or the shitstorm he could create for his employer by that running on their site unedited.

Now...would it have been nice if Newsarama addressed the issue instead of trying to delete all evidence of its existence and pretend it never happened? Sure. But what are they really going to do? It was an interview done by a contractor that they fixed as soon as they caught what had happened. I don't know any place of business that publicly chastises an employee after a mistake. I'm sure something has been privately been said to Kean to help make sure nothing that stupid or potentially inflammatory (to a creator or the audience) slips into his finished work again.