...when he stood before the thousand of points of light that he believed to be God George cut him off with, "how'd you get back?" ...
I was livid when Snoory did this! George, you idiot--can't you listen to what your guests are saying instead of leaping ahead to some list of questions you want to race through?
George has to know he does this, he must get tons of email from people complaining about specific examples.
It just isn't that hard to spot a comment of interest and follow up, or to realize the guest is part way through something interesting and simply let them continue. Does he do this intentionally? Could he really just not be listening the whole show? If so, then what on earth is he doing during the show? Does he really just not give a flip?
But if anyone questions it or suggests improvement, then they're just 'haters'.
George's derailing questions flabbergast me. The fact that so many of us see the same thing tells me that we're not imagining a problem. Other than his total lack of show prep, and his constant failures to listen to his guests, it is George's "tin ear" that bothers me most. How many times have we heard George
finally allow a guest to speak without interruption, and begin to tell a compelling story so that s/he develops a flow and makes a connection with the audience, that George will burst in with an inane, irrelevant question? This not only ruins the story and destroys the moment, it often throws the guests for such a loop that they never get their confidence back, and the appearance is not really a success.
It's so common, it's as if George is sabotaging his own show. IMO it is more George's inability to understand people. We've talked about his terribly low "EQ" or 'emotion quotient'. This is the emotional counterpart to "IQ", and represents the relative ability to understand and empathize with others, and connect with them on an emotional basis. Noory's interruptions show he has little or no ability to understand other persons.
But it still doesn't explain why he picks the moments he does. Maybe he has a rough "answer time-limit", so that when he thinks his guests go on too long, he cuts them off with a (stupid) question. He would still have no understanding of how the guest might be mesmerizing the audience.
In a sense George is like the "savant" of the title in
Rain Man, or what people used to call an "idiot savant". Except George has no special mental ability, so you'd have to drop the "savant" and diagnose him "George Noory - Idiot".
Certain persons have no feelings of empathy for others at all, and don't understand (and usually don't care) how their actions might affect or harm others. They don't have appropriate feelings for certain events and interactions, but they learn to recognize the circumstances and the emotions, and over time also learn how to
act like they have the same emotions as everyone else. This is the pathological narcissist, suffering the "narcissistic personality disorder", which with variations is seen in genocidal egomaniacs, serial sex killers or passive-aggressive egocentric radio program hosts.
Who knows why George does it? We only know that each show brings the fresh possibility that a C2C guest will hold the audience spellbound with his or her tale, and that just before the huge alien craft lands beside the car, a ghostly figure materializes, the hidden passage under the Sphinx is opened, a dead grandmother speaks, or the incredibly bright figure of unconditional love draws near, George will break in with that Great Lakes nasality and ask, "So, have you been doing a lot of bookstore signings?"
*sigh*
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