Eva Jinek and Jort Kelder collided with each other on live television last night. She tried to lure him out of the tent by questioning him sharply about his suicide joke.
Jort Kelder got an angry mob after him on Twitter yesterday. He’s been put through the paces for a suicide joke on his podcast. When a guest remarks that people are already suicidal these days if they fail an exam, Jort jokingly shouts: “Then it might be better if they end it.”
Jort responds
The offending fragment from Jort’s podcast was shown yesterday in Eva Jinek’s talk show. The presenter sat at the table to respond to it. It is striking that the studio bursts out laughing at the suicide joke, but Eva hears something else: “You can already hear the reaction here in the studio. People think that’s disgusting, I think.”
With her opening remark, Eva immediately makes it clear what kind of conversation it should be: one full of sensation. Jort surprised: “Yeah, huh? This is called irony, because there is also something behind it and that makes it all nuanced of course. Is there really anyone in this country who thinks I’m going to advise people to kill yourself?”
‘No regrets’
Eva: “It was a joke, you say? A Jordanian joke?”
Jort: “Totally. I would make it again tomorrow. I don’t regret it or anything, because this is just what happens in a live radio conversation. Guys, we’re all like that… Oh, the toes are so long. Well, I’d be happy to stand on it.”
Eva: “The people were incensed.”
Jort: “Fine. Yeah, guys, you know… If you couldn’t say stuff like this in a live interview…”
“Eva, do me a favor!”
Jort finds the reactions to his joke highly exaggerated. “So the irony is – but well, irony is no longer allowed in the Netherlands these days – that the response proves exactly the statement that was in that conversation.”
Eva: “Well, I don’t think anyone is upset when you talk about millennials and the lack of resistance to adversity, but when people feel like you’re driving very vulnerable people to suicide, you talk about that…”
Jort stunned: “Eva, do me a favor.”
Eva: “I only say what is said about it!”
‘What nonsense!’
Jort thinks that Eva goes along too much with the angry Twitter mob. “Do you mean this nonsense yourself? Are you really going through with this?”
Eva: “I make the translation that people were angry about. I’m just telling you that.”
Then Eva accuses him that it must be a clever publicity stunt. “It’s also very busy in podcast land. You also have to do something to stand out.”
Jort: “That’s nonsense. It is a radio program, live on NPO Radio 1 and this is a spin-off called De Jortcast. You can’t script stuff like this, can you? I don’t know what she’s going to say, do I? That’s nonsense isn’t it? That is really nonsense.”
chicken breast
At the end of the broadcast, Eva confronts him with another offending comment from his podcast, namely that ‘women just can’t put things into perspective’. “Is this a very dangerous statement?”, says Jort.
Eva: “Then why are you answering so seriously? You let yourself completely in my fish trap… You are now the chicken breast in the piranha bath, I ate you!”
Jort: “You start this fragment twice! If you don’t see the context, yes…”
Eva: “I’m teasing you! Just like you’re teasing people a bit too, right?”
Jort’s performance at Jinek in itself also leads to criticism:
