What’s The Matter With Deborah Solomon’s Column?

This is how Deborah ended her interview in today’s Times Magazine with Tzipi Livni:

“Do your children agree with your politics?
They know that what I’m doing is for the sake of their own future. I want to know that when I die I leave them something more than a bank account — a state to live in, to be proud of.

Are you dying?
It’s not part of my plan for now.”

Really? I understand she is trying to be edgy, but the editors of the New York Times Magazine should know the difference between thoughtful and immature probing. At the top of each interview, the name of the respondent is  featured in bold, and then Solomon gets her byline. This is misleading. Solomon is always the star. The person she interviews always comes second fiddle to what she probably assumes are clever questions, but which in the end simply detract from what could be an intelligent interview.

This question is addressed to Michelle Obama’s brother, Craig Robinson

“Why did you hire a co-writer for the book? You went to Princeton. You can write.”

Here she makes the assumption that all Princeton graduates can write. They may be smart, but sometimes, those who study business, could use some help writing, something complicated, like a memoir. She should know this since she went to Columbia School of Journalism and did not learn how to conduct a proper interview.  Further along, she asks Robinson, what appears to be her default question, when interviewing a man– something about his divorce:

“You and your wife, Kelly, are the parents of a 4-month-old son, and you also have two teenage children from your first marriage, which ended in divorce.”

Again, with Charlie Crist;

“You were married nearly 30 years ago, but the marriage lasted less than a year. Do you prefer living alone?”

Last week, she could not help sliding it in, this time with Eminem:

“Happy Father’s Day, by the way. As a divorced father of three daughters, are you a good dad?

A few months ago, she sat down with renowned author, Chinua Achebe, only to ask him what pre-schoolers sing at birthday parties:

“How old are you now?”

Please, someone make it stop. The NY Times brand opens many doors, and Solomon takes full advantage. She gets to sit down with a lot of interesting people that many other writers would  spend weeks researching, in order  to get the most substance from the interview. With her mystifying need to ask petty questions, she makes a mockery of this  process.

The next time she makes herself the center of the interview, with little regard for the readers’ interest in the person being interviewed, we should all ask the Times, “when do we get to pull the plug on Solomon?” Hopefully, the answer to, “Are you dying?”–Deborah Solomon’s column, that is–is a simple; “Yes. It will now be called ‘Marriage Therapy with Deborah,’ in US Magazine.”