Monday, May 26, 2008

Open Thread

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 5:18 AM
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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Has anyone else noticed that NPR has pretty much stopped doing feature-length stories on any domestic issue other than the campaign horse-race? I mean I know they sent their finest over to China before the quake, so I expected a lot of stories from there already. But even before the quake, I can't remember the last time I heard a news story on, say, US energy policy, immigration, the recession, science wars, taxes, the Bush Justice department's refusal to prosecute subpoenead witnesses who refuse to testify before Congress, etc etc.

It's like NPR has sent all of its reporters overseas, and left only Susan Stamberg behind so we can be kept apprised of what's happening in the art museums, opera houses and gardens of America.

5/26/08, 1:30 PM
Anonymous said...

The Evil Men Do

Morning Edition had a story this morning on PTSD and the psychiatrists donating their time to help soldiers coming home with it.

I wrote the ombudusman and told her I had a novel suggestion for eliminating PTSD: stop sending troops overseas to kill people in the third world who have done you no wrong.

I'm sure it will fall on deaf ears over there at National Pentagon Radio.

I also made mention of Hannah Arendt's essay Eichmann in Jerusalem, where she talks about the banality of evil, or her thesis “that the great evils in history generally, and the Shoah in particular, were not executed by fanatics or sociopaths but rather by ordinary people—like the good people at NPR—who accepted the premises of their nation and therefore participated with the view that their actions were normal.”

They're so patrioteeristic and militaristic over there at NPR.

There is a difference between "patrioteerism," and patriotism, though.

Or, as Mark Twain said at the turn of the century, "My country--when she is right."

But then a more mordant commentator , H.L. Mencken, put it best when he said: "[T]he American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, sniveling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goose-steppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages."

I myself wouldn't say that about the American people in toto, but I would not hesitate saying that about the majority of the people at National Pentagon Radio.

5/26/08, 5:33 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

I guess that's why we're sticking with some kind of critique of NPR at this late date: for all the reasons you say, and for all the reasons yet to be said.

5/26/08, 10:47 PM

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