Saturday, December 23, 2006

Open Thread - Weekend

NPR related comments welcomed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jacki Lyden has got to be the most annoying host on NPR after Scott Simon. She was SO annoying, in fact, I had to check out her NPR bio tonight.

And I found this tidbit...

"She was in Chicago the first day the bureau opened its doors. She had heard NPR's Scott Simon on the air asking newly unemployed steelworkers if there was something about steel they enjoyed making. Would they be just as happy to have made pink plastic flamingoes if they could make the same wage? This, she says, was the place she was meant to work."


How perfect is that?

Porter Melmoth said...

Yes indeed, Jacki and Scott - perfect examples of deeply deficient types who nevertheless got an 'in' to not-quite-mass-market broadcasting.

Jacki's voice, if nothing else, disqualifies her from an on-air presence. It's got that slightly strangulated quality (but not as bad as Bob Simon on '60 Minutes', who seems to have an invisible Vise-Grips [TM] squeezing his cheeks), and such a voice makes for really lousy presentation. Beyond the voice problem, the very content that she contributes has the same smuggy, drippy, mediocre, and self-pleased poppycock feel that her idol Scott has proudly been flaunting all these years. That and the expectation of more of the same have made me turn the radio off Saturday mornings, and keep it off.

But hell, many, many listeners LOVE these people. It's just refreshing to hear from others on this blog that I am not the only one suffering at the receiving end of NPR's garbage chute. But I'm learning to walk away. Like Noam Chomsky said, I must have a masochistic streak to put up with some of these broadcasts, but sometimes I do so with a fascinated horror. Sick, huh?

Happy Holidays!