Stephen Fry Open To Question 3of3

Stephen Fry in 1989 answers questions from Scottish prefects and a very young Kristan Guru Murphy

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Stephen
• Fry
• Open
• To
• Question
• debate
• eighties
• politics

[conwolds]

He truly is a fantastic, clever an modest guy. I'd kill to meet him :)

[jismith1989]

The kids are "Scottish prefects", i.e. hand-selected children from relatively good schools. They are not indicative of the population at large, just as what one sees on TV today is generally not indicative.

[Nerfi]

@SirKickz You have no idea how true this is. I recently had occasion to debate with my sister's boyfriend, a 50-year old tenured English professor at a prominent California school. It was on the topic of Social medicine, and his debating style was infuriating. For a 50 year old, respected professor to ignore my major arguments and try to repeatedly use fallacy and attacking my credentials as legitimate tactics astonished me. If those are our teachers, I fear for this country.

[SirKickz]

It's a weird, and very grand feeling, watching this show, as an American. It would seem that civil debate is a lost art in my country, which is quite sad. My poor countrymen seem to have lost the ability to disagree with each other without disrespecting each other. It's heartening to see that the world, as a whole, hasn't yet lost sight of this practice.

[dlmaddox1]

Haha at the rap at the end. Love it.

[GOLDENGAZZA]

I'd love to meet Fry but would be so in awe of him I wouldn't have anything to say to him.

[blueskiesmev]

what a cool show, i'd like to see more of this type of programming.

[thehatehouse]

How can 28000 people watch the first clip and only 6700 view the third? God knows why the majority decide not to watch the following videos.

[terratrema]

@jismith1989

Oh, okay, fair enough then.

[jismith1989]

@terratrema I don't want to expose the programme as fraudulent or take issue with anything of any signifcance that they said (since they talk a lot of sense, or rather question Stephen sensibly): I simply wanted to refute the claim, made by another commentor, that this programme shows that the kids of yesteryear were better than our modern lot.

[terratrema]

@jismith1989

Well that's great and everything, but surely you ought to be taking issue with what they are saying, rather than who they are, if you want to expose this programme as fraudulent?

[JankeyL]

awesome rap at the end :P