The Downside to Speaking in the Media

Speaking with TJ Walker, the show where we dissect how and what world class leaders communicate. Welcome to the show. Today's show is a little bit different. Typically on the program I am giving you examples of what do to the me in the media, how to help yourself with the media, the benefits of speaking to the media, how fascinating, influential people communicate effectively to the media. But I don't want to be unfair. There can be a real downside to speaking to the media. After all, people do lose their jobs sometimes by speaking to the media. Some of you have heard me talk in the past about how quarter of a century ago I in fact lost my job because of a particular quote. So I wanted to just share something with you today. As many of you know, I'm from time to time called on to be a guest on other talk shows, news networks. I've been on Fox, msnbc, Court tv, the Daily show, cnn. I've been on basically every network. And I say that not to sound like a braggart, but just to let you know that this isn't my first time at the rodeo. And I do want to give you a sense of some of the downside. Earlier this just yesterday I was invited to appear on frankly a pretty obscure cable TV news show. It's rt. It's the Russian television network. Some have criticized it as being a propaganda tool of Putin. I'll leave that for others to determine. But I was asked to give my honest opinions on the presidential campaign. Now I'm not going to bore you with my opinions of who would be a better president. Everybody has opinions on that. I was giving analysis of communication trends. But when you're talking about presidential politics, people just automatically assume if you say something negative about one person or positive about the other, you're clearly in that camp. And when it comes to presidential politics or politics in general, people throw all sorts of common decency aside. The second they feel that you have a political opinion different from their own, they feel very free to just trash you and vilify you. So I want to share some of the comments. This is just again one short little interview. This was like a 10 minute interview I was on. And I want to just share with you some of the comments. At this point there are more than 400 comments about this particular video clip. And I share with you these so you do have a sense that, okay, if you're going to be in the media, you can be intellectually honest, you can look your best, sound good, professional competent, you are going to get mostly nastiness and Bile. Now maybe there were some positive comments about me. I haven't seen any yet out of the 400 and some. So here's a typical comment and I'm going to edit out the nastiest ones because I don't want to be banned from India and some of the places where we are on the clean only content on itunes. But here's something the Jerg profile writes on YouTube. TJ Walker. What a sleaze. That's it. He doesn't take the time to articulate what I said, but I have to conclude it's simply because I said something nice about a political figure that he doesn't like. And here's another comment about me. This is from someone named Section 2. Looks like a demon. Okay, soulless paid shill. Again, people think because I said something nice about a politician I couldn't have possibly said it because I believe it to be true. Or I'm giving an honest assessment. The only reason is that I must be a soulless paid shell. Here's another one. Talk Jive Walker. What a freaky looking character. I wonder where they dug this guy up from. Oh, here's one positive comment. Someone says he's probably done more in life than you. That's from Rashenka. That's the first one I've seen that was at least positive. So that's nice. And folks, some of the nastiest ones I can't even read to you because they're so completely filled with bile. Many of the comments are just ripping apart every aspect of my looks. There's not a lot of creativity here. Here's one from a guy named Linky Link. He says that guy looks evil. That's one of the comments. And here's some again that are just so vile I can't even repeat. Here's another one who says talking about me, he looks like Putin ironically. Is he evil? Yeah, he reminds me of an evil character. A cartoon. Now there are a lot of wildly misogynistic comments in here about me, Trump, especially Hillary Clinton. A lot of anti semitic comments. TJ is such a expletive faced shill. Again, nobody's actually making rational arguments of where I have factually misstated something or making a counter argument. It's just entirely ad hominem. Here's another one from somebody named hivetyrant36. This dude has an evil glint in his eye. Now I was debating against a woman so I have to conclude this person is talking about me since I was the only dude in the so called televised debate now it goes on. Here's someone, I guess, questioning my sexual practices, which is a common theme on the Internet and on YouTube by trolls who don't want to make rational arguments so they just constantly attack sexuality. Is that if. Is as if that were something that just hit hard. Here's another one. This guy is effing delusional. Again, I'm the only guy on the show, so I have to conclude this person, Devin, is talking about me. Here's another one. Oh, this one was my favorite, actually. This is from Gig Mo. He, meaning me. He is a straight up lying shill and delusional to boot. A sociopathic, pathological freak. He is like a remorseless child killer in a televised courtroom who just grins and grins. Now, folks, you may be wondering, what in the world did I say? I can assure you that I basically gave straightforward, moderate political analysis that is not different than what probably 60% of Americans believe about a particular candidate. And I don't even want to mention the candidate because I don't want to color this whole debate here. The only reason I'm doing this show is I do want you to realize on this particular topic, is that there are some downsides to going into the media and entering public life especially, and in some ways almost exclusively when you are talking about politics. Many people who are normally nice, thoughtful, polite, respectful neighbors, friends, colleagues, there's something about politics and they simply become monsters. They feel no need to accept any normal standards of decency, decorum, civility. It all goes out the window. And they take the attitude of, hmm, I have a position on policy A and I like a candidate who espouses policy A. You like a candidate who represents policy B. I'm now therefore entitled to say, you're a monster and you're a child molester and you're worse than Hitler. That seems to be the thought process of people when they go on the Internet, especially when they are talking about politics on YouTube. Here's another one. J. King, dude from New York, that's me is a joke. Get your fake expletive smile out of rt. So apparently it's okay to smile if you agree with people people. But if you disagree with someone or you have a different opinion, a smile is now for is now an object of ridicule. Here's another one. Paul Cronin, T.J. walker, an odiously obtuse sycophantic lapdog, again for committing the horrific sin, saying something positive about a politician that other people don't like. Here's someone who actually asked a Question TJ show me that the person you're, you're talking about is actually taking this position. Someone who actually at least made an attempt to ask a question question which is rare. Again, typically it's just ad hominem attack, it's just nastiness. Now a number of them, I forgot, I don't even see the one now because there's so many here. One of them is accusing me of having all sorts of plastic surgery on my face and other ridiculous things. Here's the thing. Now I'm an over 50 year old man and I've seen all this before for 30 years. I can take it. But I do want to warn you, if you're new to the game, it can be chilling. Some of these things are actually threats. And I in fact have had many death threats on the Internet posted before. I don't see any here that quite get to that point. Again, all, all of this for the sin of saying something nice about a politician that is actually viewed favorably by at this point a plurality of Americans. Here's another one from Paul Matters. T.J. is a Wall street shill. He has no credibility. T.J. walker is a, is a cuckoo. Okay, I guess that's short for cuckold. So again that's supposed to be a horrible cut and to be a knock against the arguments I put out. And folks, this video has about only about 7,000 views, which for YouTube for a major news network is not a particularly. That's not considered a viral video. Okay, here's one. This appears to be from a woman, Svetlana Feldman. T.J. walker Face look like somebody's. And then they talked about a part of the anatomy that I won't mention. I like when American women pretend that they nearly virgins when in reality they are cheap sons, sluts. Hillary Clinton left a lot of dead Bob, blah, blah. Just bizarre, bizarre nonsense. So here's my advice folks. What I do is I'll look at some of this stuff for chuckles. In fact, the nastiest ones I'll cut and paste and I'll send to my friends and family because they just get such a kick out of it. What I don't do is engage. There's the expression don't feed the trolls. Here's one from Robert Martin. T.J. walker must have done every surgery possible on his face. Well, I mean, I'm not even sure how to take that because I've never had any surgery on my face. Maybe that means he thinks it's just so good looking. I don't know. Says he incidentally talks rubbish and he is rude and loud. He loves to repeat himself. He has an utterly ugly grin that's made to give chills. And this person goes on to talk about the woman I was debating. Katie Hopkins has beautiful, sexy eyes and everything about her face and her expression says I am natural. Folks. All you can do, I think, is laugh. Now, obviously if you are receiving death threats at some point, you have to take that seriously. And I do think is nasty and is very vicious as so much of the commentary is against me and attacking every part of my body and face and hair. It's about a thousand times worse for any woman. I wish that weren't the case, but I think that is true. Here's one from Millie. God bless tj. You are the worst. And it just goes on and to rant and rant. Here's another one, Ronald. But T.J. walker is a. And then it goes on to use the word that's similar to donkey. And he should be using an not a. But most people who write invective on the Internet are not particularly keen on great grammar. Here's one. TJ Walker is a true piece of trash. Okay, here's another one. TJ Walker is a numpty. Don't know what that means, but it sure doesn't sound like a compliment. It goes on. Here's one disgusting guy, love to lick old. And then we go into Donald Trump vocabulary. You can, I think, figure that out. I find it offensive for tj and they go on. So, folks, you get the idea if you're looking, I'm not going to do this program. The justice and these trolls, the justice of giving them extra attention and publicity. If you really want to look for it, I'm sure you could. This is on the Russia Today network on their YouTube channel. And again, I say this not to dissuade you from speaking out, from voicing your political opinions, but I do want you to be prepared. People will be nasty. They may try to hack your website. They may try to go after your clients. All of those things have happened to me before. People, when it comes to politics, they may be your very best neighbor, best friend, someone you could go to at 3 in the morning if you have an emergency and you need someone to take you to the hospital. Those very same people will slice you to ribbons when they have the anonymity of the Internet. My advice is either ignore it completely or look at it and laugh at it. That's really all you can do. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. We'll be back with regular programming tomorrow. We got a great interview with you with Todd Johnson. So please tune in tomorrow for that. Hope you're enjoying the rest of your weekend. Take care. Thanks for listening to speaking with T.J. walker.