20 Follow-Up Questions News Reporters Probably Shouldn’t Ask

1. To a nurse who contracted the Ebola virus while caring for a patient:

I’m doing this interview remotely. Maybe you should’ve thought of that?

2. To an innocent man cleared by DNA after spending 30 years in prison:

I guess nobody believed you?

3. To the lone survivor of an airplane crash:

I guess what I’m wondering is, what prevented you from picking the lock on the cockpit door and flying the plane yourself?

4. To the soldier wounded in a special op:

Why not just go around the land mines?

5. To the wife of a male politician caught with a prostitute:

No offense, but did you try Pilates?

6. To the heart surgeon who accidentally killed a patient:

Before you punctured the lung, did you consider she might need that to breathe?

7. To the professional hockey player who fractured his skull:

OK, but you chose to play hockey. Is there anything inside that skull you actually need?

8. To the victim of police brutality:

Why not just tell the officer the chokehold was too tight?

9. To the middle-school girl whose former BFF stole her boyfriend:

I guess you’re re-thinking the whole second base thing right about now, huh?

10. To the oppressed woman living under Taliban rule:

The burka. Love it? Or make it stop?

11. To an unemployed factory worker who’s been looking for work for years:

The McDonald’s by my house is looking for fry cooks. Have you tried there?

12. To the hotel guest who was eaten alive by bedbugs:

You didn’t sleep in the bathtub? Wow, OK, Prince Charles.

13. To the family whose house was swept away by a tsunami:

One time when I was surfing, I lost my board. So I totally get it.

14. To a woman who escaped from a North Korean prison and wrote a memoir:

Scary stuff. I still think The Hunger Games is a little better though.

15. To a counselor who was banned from the Boy Scouts for being gay:

But going camping is a choice, right? You see where I’m going with this?

16. To a toddler who fell off a chair and knocked out her front teeth:

Looking back, is there anything you should have done differently?

17. To the gas-station attendant who was held up at gunpoint:

Don’t gas stations all sell Mace like, right there at the counter? What the hell, bro?

18. To a sexual-assault victim attacked by a powerful celebrity:

You know, there are ways to not perform oral sex…biting?

19. To an aid worker recently beheaded by an extremist Islamic terrorist group:

You know, there are ways to not get your head cut off…ducking?

20. To a polar bear who almost drowned because of disappearing ice floes:

You know, there are ways not to drown…swimming?