Oh, man.
“Professor’s Skype Interview on Live TV Gatecrashed by His Kids” was the latest viral sensation — and it’s divided folks almost as badly as did the “What Color Is the Dress?” question.
We’re betting you’ve seen the video. If not, it goes a little something like this: A live Skype interview on BBC with an international relations professor in South Korea. The professor’s interview goes awry when his two tiny children burst into his home office on camera! The professor tries in vain to continue! He shoves away his daughter without looking at her! A panicked woman bolts into the room to retrieve them! Who is she? Why doesn’t the professor acknowledge her presence? Why doesn’t he talk to his kids? Is this patriarchy at work yet again (annoyed white guy waiting for an anxious woman to hurry up and clean up the chaos created by kids)? Is this racism (hordes of people on the internet assuming the Asian woman who grabs the kids is the nanny)? Is this just a normal family?
More:Professor’s BBC Skype Interview Totally Crashed by His Kids
The family says it’s C. They’re a pretty normal family. Yesterday, the professor, Robert Kelly, and his wife, Kim Jung-A, discussed the event in a less eventful — and less polarizing — video interview.
Kelly said he was immediately aware that his kids had busted in on him and was mortified. “I was just hoping that my wife would eventually see it and maybe find some way to run them out of the room.”
“I was hoping that maybe my daughter might sit down and read a book or something, even for 30 seconds until we could just cut the interview, but once my son came in in the little roller, then it was sort of, then there was nothing I could do. I was just hoping you guys might cut it on your end and I was just sort of maintaining a straight face hoping to get through it,” he continued.
What was Kim’s take on her interview-crashing kids and stoic husband?
“He usually locks the door,” she said. “Most of the time they come back to me after they find the locked door. But they didn’t. And then I saw the door was open. It was chaos for me.” Yeah, we could tell by her Kramer impression, skidding into the room, that she was definitely in an “oh shit” frame of mind.
Kelly and Kim were terrified that this viral chaos might harm Kelly’s career. He apologized to the BBC after the first video, but BBC surprised the family by asking if they could release the clip online.
And the rest was internet history, as they say.
Kelly said during the second interview that he and his wife had to turn off their phones and steer clear of Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites because it was all too much attention. We’ve seen the arguments raging online about the clip, and not everyone (including us) loved Kelly’s handling of the situation.
Let’s just say we like the second video — with the entire family (including swagger-ific daughter Marion and Baby James) participating — a whole lot better than the first. Kelly smiles! Holds his baby! Laughs! His wife does not look stricken. She is animated and funny. The kids seem to have weathered the internet storm just fine.
Kelly and Kim said that the response to the interview gone wrong has been mostly positive.
“I mean, it was terribly cute,” Kelly said. “I saw the video like everybody else. My wife did a great job cleaning up a really unanticipated situation as best she possibly could… It was funny. If you watch the tape I was sort of struggling to keep my own laughs down. They’re little kids and that’s how things are.”
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