Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Open Thread

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 5:17 AM
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7 comments:

Porter Melmoth said...

NPR (Not Pertaining to Reality) is still on top of the Big Story in Pakistan. Nice little marching band soundbytes from Pervez Musharraf's Washingtonian-or-is-it-Napoleanic Farewell to the Troops shindig.

One thing I still don't get: why isn't that huge landmass just to the east of Pakistan, whatsitsname, you know, the OTHER 'nukular' nation - India - EVER MENTIONED in post-Philip Reeves NPR reports? It's pretty important. As in, what does India think of all this Pak stuff? Contrary to US obsessions with its own affairs, EVERYTHING Pakistan does has to do with India. NPR is either mysteriously unaware of this fact, or else their own agenda trumps any bothersome recognition of the World's Largest Democracy. At any rate, the only person of NPR that I'd trust to grasp the regional concepts is the aforementioned Mr. Reeves, and I don't know if he's been furloughed or fired or what.

Well, whatever . . . More blatant proof of the patent UNRELIABILITY of NPR 'News'.

11/28/07, 10:41 AM
Anonymous said...

I know this isn't an NPR production, but since they are in bed with each other, I'll complain here about this morning's Marketplace report on ME. It started out with: Will the Palestinians allow a peace accord?, and finished with John Frumm. As to the former, I found it very odd that the whole peace process hinges on a government which has 1/3 of its parliament in Isreali jails. Outrageous! As to Frumm, who gives a shit what that neocon moron has to offer? Someone remind me as to when the last time Frumm was correct about anything.

11/28/07, 11:57 AM
artes moriendi said...

Mara Liasson trundled out yet another hit piece this morning against Hillary Clinton that was remarkable for its snarkiness and sheer vacuousness. I am by no means a Hillary Clinton enthusiast and believe that her corporate ties, her vacillations on Iraq, and woefully unenlightened foreign policy stance on the Middle East (among many other things) warrant skeptical, adversarial reporting. Liasson's pieces, however, are so mired in the trivial and so preoccupied with facile, empty, high-school level character analysis that they scarcely deserve that name. These are snarky, gossipy screeds gussied up as serious journalism.

The brilliant point of this morning's piece?--Hillary and Bill Clinton have a sinisterly close relationship and it might be "bad" if both occupy the White House if Clinton is elected president. To make this point Liasson dragged out Sally Bedell Smith, a trafficker in celebrity smut whose prim, WASPy, prissy-genteel demeanor somehow has earned her the respect of Sunday show media bigwigs, who of course love to hear tiresome details about how big Clinton's penis is repeated ad infinitum, although the rest of the country wearied of this crap a decade ago. This scintillating femme savante of Washington politics uttered some vapid nonsense about the Clinton's weirdly close "partnership" that wouldn't have been out of place on the pages of People or Cosmo. And that was about as substantive as this piece got. No mention of policy matters, no discussion of positions on political issues--just gossipy speculation on the nature of the Clinton's marriage, and of course FOX-style insinuations that Hillary Clinton is a cold, calculating, shallow, testicle-crushing two-faced bitch. Liasson duly appears every week and a half or so on NPR to tell us this same empty story in reports that are always breathakingly free of ideas, serious analysis, or evidence of an original thought. We can get this crap from CNN or FOX any day of the week. Why do we have to have it served up on NPR as well?

It's clear from her "reporting" how intensely and deeply Liasson dislikes Clinton--something we should never sense in a journalist's stories about a candidate. Perhaps Liasson is understandably suffering from Clinton fatigue after covering the White House during the nineties. If so she should recuse herself from covering Clinton--or, better, she should direct some of the same withering scorn and skepticism she has for Clinton towards other candidates: Giuliani, for instance, or McCain. Oh, but I forgot: McCain is a "maverick," as Liasson never fails to inform us when his name comes up. And Giuliani is "authentic"--"comfortable in his own skin." FOX and Tim Russert write the scripts; Liasson serves them up for NPR listeners as "serious," "mature" political reporting.

11/28/07, 6:21 PM
Anonymous said...

Ah yes, ol' pop-eyed Mara (swear she does look as though they're squeezing her big toe in a vise underneath the Pox Power Panel table every Sunday). This is what passes for 'reporting' these days - the puppeteers of their own maligned version of conventional wisdom.

must.... resist.... nodding of head....

11/28/07, 7:28 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

It shall be remembered that Mara-Mara still classifies herself as 'left of center'. And lest we forget, Richard Perle and my good buddy Paul Wolfowitz have always been registered Democrats.

11/28/07, 10:25 PM
Anonymous said...

Yeah,I'll never forget when Mara Liarsson derisively referred to Amy Goodman as "not really a reporter."

Goodman and her photographer were injured covering East Timor, and Mara never leaves the beltway and was never shot at while covering a story.

So that presstitute is the one who is "not really a reporter." A gossip columnist? Most certainly.

Flavio

11/29/07, 4:49 PM
Anonymous said...

She really said that about Amy Goodman?!? (the bunny exclaimed in mock disbelief)

It's all too obvious which of the two is the poseur.

11/30/07, 6:10 PM

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