Wednesday, June 03, 2020

An awkward 21 seconds of silence on live TV

The time-span of 8 minutes 46 seconds is seared into most people's minds right now.
But here's another one, 21 seconds: the time that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delayed before answering a question on live television about Donald Trump's handling of the race protests in the United States.
It was priceless television. You could see Trudeau fighting against the impulse to just tell the truth, desperately searching for a politic response that didn't drop him into too much shit with the USA, but that still satisfied his home base, and didn't sound too much like a bare-faced lie. He started to speak, stopped, started again, stopped, sighed, thought some more...
In the end, all he said was the usual anodyne political bromides. But the delay? - priceless! 21 seconds silence is an awfully long time on live television!

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