This morning Scott Simon confessed to having idealized assumptions about Fidel Castro back when he was "of that generation of activists" (say what?). But never fear, the intrepid Simon changed his mind, telling us that "when I first went to Cuba on a reporting trip I retained some of the rosy assumptions of my youth but hard reporting challenges assumptions." Hard reporting - Scott Simon? - now that is funny!Someone needs to toss a little cold water on Simon when he has these Walter Mitty delusions. Not only does he think he does "hard reporting" but thinks he's on leftist news show and has to challenge some of his colleagues or listeners about being apologists for Castro.
Hey, Simon, you're on NPR, remember? You're basically a mouthpiece for the State Department and an apologist for US militarism, nothing more and nothing less...well, maybe less.
(I noticed that American Experience on PBS is covering Castro & Cuba and it looks like a far more nuanced approach than anything I've ever heard on NPR - although Daniel Schorr had a pretty decent commentary about Cuba this week.)
5 comments:
Heh heh, Simon-sez - more like "Hardly Reporting."
Ya might be needin' a new steno pad pretty soon, with all the crockery you have been appointed and annointed to parrot. Carry on.
There are few things worse than these Nationalist Pathetic Radicals inflicting us with their tedious and embarrassing and boring personalities. I wonder how Scotty the Slimon feels about democracy when (and if) he sets foot in the South Bronx? (No offense Bronxers - fill in the blank with any failed American community.)
We should cut Slimon some slack. Ever since he became a dad, he's much more sensitive to the suffering masses - of Cuba.
You know another thing I can't STAND about the Simonizer? His awful voice modulations. His voice either drops out, or it rises into sickening 'story-telling' modes, in attempting to bring 'interest' and 'expression' to his dreary show. I notice he had a segment on politicians' voices and their effects, but I just wasn't interested. Oh, I'm interested all right, but from NOT within any NPR context. Besides, I did what my wife suggested: 'Why don't you just turn that guy off?' Instead of giving my usual reply: 'Honey, I can't stand him, but I'm doing research!', I did indeed cut him off, lousy modulation and all.
Correction: But NOT from within...
PS: I think Scotty's dream was to become the poor man's Danny Kaye. Well, one of his dreams, anyway.
I'm not a big fan of put-down humor, but I always get a kick out of Jim Nayder's really quite bold put-downs of the Slime-monizer. Apparently, Jim's the only one who can get away with it, under the pretense of being a jokester from the get-go.
PPS: The Annoying Music segments, while not as good as they used to be, were/are one of the very few things on NPR News that actually made/makes me laugh - and my laughter drowns out those awful 'Mercy! Mercy!' Slimonizings.
Perhaps, Porter, perhaps. I had blithely written that feeble attempt at comic relief off sometime back - it's just even more annoying people demeaning annoying music.
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