NPR is persistent - I'll give 'em that. You might recall how after the November 2006 elections, NPR went on a campaign to convince the public that the vote was all about "bipartisanship" despite a complete lack of evidence indicating any such thing. They've come back to this non-issue several times since (in January of 2007 they dedicated a whole series to it).Listening to ATC today, I thought I was having a Deja Vu moment. NPR's Brian Naylor was covering the meaningless conference in Oklahoma featuring "centrists" whining about partisanship. Didn't they just report on this yesterday? Same nonsense as yesterday, but today this interchange struck me:
Christine Todd Whitman: "The intent is to try to get the two existing major parties back to a place where they are functioning as they used to function - certainly from a partisan perspective, but in one that actually gets good policy enacted."
Brian Naylor: "And Whitman and Nunn agree that's something most voters want too."
Really? I don't think so. Where's one puny thread of evidence that voters want bipartisanship? Digby did a great post this past summer, revealing this bipartisan crap for what it is - a page right out of the Republican playbook. If I were a Republican strategist, I'd be on the phone thanking NPR for being such a loyal servant.
(image from Wikipedia)
5 comments:
If there's one thing I can't stand about NPR, it's statements like the Naylor one quoted: "And Whitman and Nunn agree that's something most voters want too." Indeed, where, oh, where is the evidence?
But that's just one example of the NPR style.
Those kind of pat generalizations are entirely tailored for the delicate NPR audience, who are always in search of safe, comforting messages amidst the carnage. The on-air personalities wrap up their little stories with a prim little bow - a mud pie for the 'thinking' ones out there who want to be 'involved', but not if it threatens their investments or their sheltered way of life.
Call me a curmudgeon, but I'm regularly disgusted at how influential NPR has been in this respect. Friends and associates have acknowledged my warnings about NPR, and they make special mention of the fact that they're keeping track of the insidiousness (hopefully they're saying that not merely to please me!), but I still get a lot of 'I heard it on NPR' references... I know, it all goes back to that ease of access and supposed 'non-commercial' aspect that has NPR keeping its' audiences as captives. But like Dr. King, I can dream of 'freedom at last'!
PS: Re: the illustration - the Mughal way of execution as an inspiration for the GOP's taste in capital punishment, I should think. (N.B. - as a bit of imperial oneupsmanship, the British, to punish Indian rebels, strapped them to the mouths of cannons and fired away...)
Well Porter, I actually thought about labeling the poor victim of the execution "The American Voter" and photoshopping the faces of Karl Rove Lee Atwater and newt Gingrich over the directors and bystanders, but figured that would be a bit heavy handed and might get in the way of some better interpretation I hadn't even thought of...
Yessir, you could rotate many an eligible face in that slot every hour. And, not to worry about being heavy-handed - 'tis THEY who are heavy-handed!
Funny that in all these lovely, soothing stories, they never mention Grover Norquist's famous "Bipartisanship is date rape" quotation...
Yyyyyeah, and no one seemed to be roping up the white flag during those dismal years between, say, 2002 and 2006 - oh, how the high have fallen, and now that the scale of justice has wiggled just enough (at last!) they push out this little bullet point that everybody should start making nice - and of course, leave it to "themmmm" (public radio wussies, as reference) to pick up the baton and run with it. Pitifully transparent if ya ask me.
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