Sunday, September 23, 2007

Open Thread

NPR News driving you nuts? Got comments? Park 'em here.
Posted by Mytwords at 1:34 PM
Labels:

5 comments:

Porter Melmoth said...

A bit of info on Juan 'Worthless' Williams in the news:
http://www.crooksandliars.com
/2007/09/26/bush-cherry-picks-juan
-williams-for-an-interview-and-npr
-refuses/

9/26/07, 9:44 PM
Anonymous said...

Regarding NPR's refusal to let the Bushies pick their own NPR interviewer, at least NPR did the right thing on this one. The pretense of editorial independence, though, is quite the laugh.

9/27/07, 9:56 AM
Porter Melmoth said...

Ga-Ga-Guy Raz-amataz gave a curious and semi-maddening/semi-interesting report today about the Baghdad base airport ('second busiest in the world'). On one side he was doing his typical gosh-golly-gee-whiz-drooling-
marveling over military hardware in action, and on the other, he was at least showing the extent of what is going on at this particular airport on a daily basis. It was actually informative! Also, in a few instances, Raz actually seemed to distance himself (for once) from the seduction of the military show-offs (i.e. stressing the quotes around the term 'surge'), and letting the one military man he interviews show his true colors. By that I mean: when the officer talks about bombing, he notes that innocent Iraqis are often killed or injured. When he says, 'and we're sorry about that', he does so with a smile and almost a chuckle, like a little kid who's been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Life is cheap in Iraq, especially for the non-combatant cannon fodder caught in 'kinetic' activities. In a roundabout way, I'm grateful to Raz for playing that brief interview. Even a contemptible enterprise such as war can have touches of humanity, but when you run a high-tech, mechanized machine where the principal product is industrial-strength bombing, and for every 'insurgent' you take out, 2-3 non-combatants are either killed or injured, humanity sinks to a new low.

9/28/07, 10:39 AM
Anonymous said...

Ohh, goodie goodie! Andwwea Seasick is now the Weekend ATC host! When she began her commentary on how "I abhhhhhhore transition...", it was yet another one of those "mad dash to the off-button moments" (wonder if they'll produce a box set of those? :cue nasal-voiced announcer: "NPR McNews Off-Button Moments, now available on CD and high-definition DVD.. for daily hydration needs")

rant off

9/30/07, 9:23 AM
Mytwords said...

I was listening to Seabrook and in my forever foolish optimism thought the listener participation request would be something significant like "Tell us what under-reported story you'd like to have covered." Instead it turned out to be an insipid "Interview a stranger and ask if they've ever cheated on something." There is a certain irony in that, given that our political system is currently one of immense cheating, fraud and lies...hmmm...

9/30/07, 11:26 AM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)