Monday, May 07, 2007

Open Thread - Monday

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 5:02 AM
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7 comments:

brenda said...

Is it just me or is Mike Pesca of NPR trying to argue that torture is really ok?

Day to Day

I couldn't believe my ears and had to turn the radio off. Have they lost their minds?

5/7/07, 3:26 PM
Mytwords said...

Thanks for the post. I listened to the Day to Day feature. I guess the thing that sickens me about the whole debate is the absolute avoidance of dealing with the realities of torture (whether it "works" or not). The history of torture is that it ALWAYS includes mostly the torture of innocent and or legitimate opponents of injustice, it corrupts the rule of law, and it always expands. Furthermore it gives a sadistic, godlike power to the state as Kate Millet pointed out in the Politics of Cruelty - a power that it will use not to "save lives" but to crush opponents.

I just loved the hearing the slimy Mark Bowden (a curse on him and the Atlantic Monthly for publishing his barbarism) cite his admiration for Israel! Disgracful...

5/7/07, 7:08 PM
Anonymous said...

I don't think I ever got to the Mike Pesca part of the story. I just heard the lead-in which went something like this (cue the jazzy little piano tune theme music...

Madeleine Brand (in her melodius NPR host voice): "Everyone knows torture is wrong, torture is evil, but is it sometimes necessary? That story and more coming up..."

Oh Jesus F. Christ. This is right up there with "Everyone knows lynching is wrong, lynching is evil, but is it sometimes necessary?"

Or "Everyone one knows killing Jews is wrong, killing Jews is evil, but is it sometimes necessary?"

I mean, the moral emptiness of that lead-in was just so appalling that yeah, I turned the radio off.

Thanks to Bush, Gonzales and yes, Mike Pesca, we're all good Germans now, aren't we?

These people are beyond awful. Shame on NPR

5/7/07, 10:13 PM
brenda said...

"Even if it works we shouldn't do it because it's wrong. That sounds kinda wimpy"

Yeah, real men torture. I'm done with NPR forever.

5/8/07, 1:00 AM
brenda said...

One last thing, while the piece doesn't actually go and condone the practice of torture, it is framed as a typical "here's one side (all of humanity) and here's the other side (Mark Bowden).

Thus NPR succeeds in imparting a moral equivalence between the two positions. It's a cop-out, and in this case, a morally bankrupt cop-out at that.

5/8/07, 1:07 AM
Anonymous said...

Stupid Neal Conan on Monday ATC devoted a half hour to the "escort-gate" scandal. But right from the get-go he downplayed the client list and kept rationalizing how they were '2nd tier johns'. He was pretty much reading from an ABC-News script. you can be sure, if NPR wants to keep you ignorant, there's a good reason. Although I don't vouch for his cred., waynemadsenreport.com has a slightly different take.

5/8/07, 2:44 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

Perhaps there are some NPR names on these so-called 'tier' lists...

5/8/07, 6:10 PM

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