In the past week or two listening to Noory has become unbearable. The two major sources of irritation: he is unable to stop himself from telling illustrative stories taken from his own experience. He now repeats himself, telling some of the same stories. He is not a good story teller and I keeping thinking loudly: "I'm NOT listening so that I can hear your stories or your opinions your speculations." George gets in the way of his guests. Also irritating is the atrocious level of interviewing competency. Say a guest will explain nicely how she or he got into the field of X. When they finish explaining George will say, "What got you into the field of X?" Some on this thread have called him out as asking "cue card" questions but what it looks like ... and just this past two weeks I've wondered if he has a substance abuse problem... it looks to me as if he lacks imagination, or suffers diminished intellectual capacity, an inability to formulate questions that could get more deeply into the mind/subject of his guest.
I'm sure George Noory is a great guy. I remember his first session with Richard Hoagland. Hoagland (as I remember it) could barely hold back his impatience and annoyance with having to talk to someone so lacking Art's intelligence and skill. But over time Hoagland's attitude changed and now he, Hoagland, just goes with the flow.
I have considered editing the audio, editing out Noory's input so that I can listen the fabulous guests without the Nooroyance.
Consider this. I can't remember the sequence of Art's retirements, comeback, replacements etc. But I remember quite clearly that Noory came aboard about the same time as -what?- Gulf War One? 9/11? Afghanistan or Iraq? I remember Art on air strongly denying any validity to the idea that 9/11 was an inside job. If he truly believes that I can imagine that he would welcome a retirement and not having to deal with 9/11 conspiracy theories. Or did Art deny the inside job knowing what could happen to a very public person supporting the inside job theory? Right or wrong, I connected Art's disappearance to some important world event.
And enter George Noory who appears too stupid to pose a threat to any Power That Be. My apologies to George for sounding as if I have no compassion but the fact remains that George is a very poor interviewer. He'd probably be much better is he was playing his favorite hits and telling little stories about the music, when he first heard this song or when he once talked to this or that musician.
I used to look forward to downloading shows and listening to fantastic guests but now I can barely take 15 minutes of the inane statements and questions.
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