If there is one thing that people all seem to like, it's NPR. Honestly, I've never really listened to it. (There was one day I was driving to work and I came across it and listened to and felt just a wee bit smarter for having done so, but I think it was because I thought, "I'm listening to NPR. This will make me a wee bit smarter.") But Josh speaks highly of This American Life, hipster relatives think it's totally wicked and equally ace, intelligent people at work will drop it in casual conversation...all in all, it's something I feel like I should listen to.
However...
Denying el Presidente? The Pinuno? The way I sees it, when the most powerful man in American says, "Hey, I would like to talk about race on NPR with Juan Williams" one would think that NPR would say, "Nice! The most powerful man in the world is finally willing to talk about a social issue on our station which he has so long ignored." How can you say no to that? It seems so incredibly disrespectful. But, they did, because they wanted to choose who was interviewing President Bush. Now, you might think, "Well, of course Bush would choose a stooge to interview him, so good for NPR." On first blush, it would seem that Juan Williams is a stooge because horrors of horrors for lefties! He appears on Fox News on occasion! Well, yes, but he also is a regular commentator for NPR and was a former writer for the Washington Post. His credentials don't scream "conservative" and most African-American journalists associated with domestic policy don't seem incredibly enchanted with Bush.
The problem is that the current media storm has so disparaged the office of President that a liberal-leaning intellectual station thinks that it can tell teh President where to get it off. It smacks of Northeastern liberal blue-blooded cultural elitism. To quote Bart Simpson: "It's like a Milk Dud. Sweet on the outside, poison on the inside."
Okay, so this post is a bit over the top. But I haven't had ten minutes to blog in two weeks, so there you have it.
1 comment:
Holy crap. I think NPR is the biggest snobbish conspiracy. Have you noticed how everyone who listens to it has to TELL you that they're listening to it? It's because it's like getting an extended root canal for them too; they're just doing what smart people are "supposed" to do. Oh now I'm all worked up. I'll go gag down a wheatgrass organic smoothie.
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