Radiohead...Or How to Balance Dignity and Integrity in the Scales with Self Promotion

So yesterday I did a live radio interview with a talky-talk station in Texas, and although I've done radio before this one raised some interesting questions. Actually, I don't mean the host asked interesting questions. On the contrary, his questions were predictable. But after the thirty minutes were up, and thinking about the radio interview I did last week, I asked myself these philosophical questions:
1. When you are doing live radio to promote a book, and the interviewer says something incorrect but unimportant, do you eat up precious time correcting him?
2. When the host demonstrates the all-too-typical, patronizing assumptions about writing for children, do you take it on or just get back on topic to hawk the book? (My rationalization for not taking it on: a possibly futile endeavor! I can win by getting my book out there as a counterfoil).
3. When the host/hosts have some kind of schtick whose salient feature is a forced jocularity, regardless of the topic of conversation, is it okay to say something like "If you'd quit hee-hawing like a jackass for a moment I could answer your question."? (note: I didn't say this, but I entertained the idea for a moment.)

So far, the interests of self-promotion are winning the fight. All I can say is that it's a good thing these are radio interviews: on radio, nobody can see me rolling my eyes.

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