Saturday, May 31, 2008

Open Thread

It's Saturday. NPR related comments welcomed, as always.

5 comments:

Buzztree said...

Good work on that Rachel Ray piece below. Thanks!

I'm wondering also what you think about Rob Gifford's ATC report from China. Aside from the prominent role he gave himself -- not even as representative of the media, but merely himself -- being herded into and then out of the public hearing, he also characterized the earthquake at the end of his piece as a "test of the one-party system," if I remember correctly.

Funny, have you ever heard Hurricane Katrina characterized as a "test of the capitalist, so-called Democratic, two-party system"? If so, we failed abysmally!

Anonymous said...

.

I just listened to Juan Williams commentary on NPR about Obama resigning from his church. Will someone please help me articulate what it is about William's comments that makes me think "biased" "not very smart", full of his own self importance"? Help me here will you? Maybe it is just me, but I do not like this guy's voice any more than I like Bill O Reily's. Maybe I am wrong here and not being fair, why should I trust what Williams says? Is it the content or the way he says it?


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Porter Melmoth said...

Anon, I admire your attitude in still being open to giving NPR the benefit of the doubt, but the thing is, I am wary of most everything NPR promulgates. That's the point of this blog, to identify this stuff. As for Williams, in my opinion, he is a pathetic example of a representative of the 'liberal' side of things. His stale commentary works perfectly with Fox's approach, where Williams' clearly rightist stances appear to be leftist! Talk about intentionally-skewed standards! This is the sneaky side of NPR - they're playing the same game as Fox: molding minds through talking heads that want to rob us of our own critical thinking skills.

I've seen snippets of Williams' supposed 'jousting' with the always-reprehensible Bill Kristol on Fox, and they're about as well-argued and passionate as a wet, moldy firecracker. Kristol always 'wins'. This IS Fox, after all. Also, just think how much money these people are making, flaunting their worthless 'opinions' like they do. That's their incentive.

Talking of skewed standards, Hurricane Katrina will always stand as a monument to American hypocrisy. It may not be publicized in the US, but other countries (i.e. Burma, China - as well as the rest of the world) are well aware of BushCorp's failure with Katrina. Who are the Americans to preach to them about disaster relief? Sad but true. If BushCorp had really come through in the case of Katrina, our reputation would have been admired, world-wide. Another opportunity completely squandered by our utterly corrupt mafia administration. Let’s not forget the international efforts to assist in the tsunami disaster, which were pretty admirable, but the example of Katrina spoils such efforts.

Anonymous said...

Hey guys, did you catch NPR's interview of John Cusack and the making of the movie War, Inc.?

They actually let Cusack talk: you can listen to the interview here:

http://tinyurl.com/3od8aa

I was quite amazed that they would even dedicate a minute (they dedicated seven) to a serious satire on the corporatization of war.

This was a good interview in that they it wasn't a hostile hatchet job--you know, the kind where they have one of their hacks ask hostile questions of and belittle their guest.

NPR deserves kudos for this interview.

Now let's see if this is a trend...

Anonymous said...

Oh, and I just looked again and saw it was Guy Rrraz who did the interview (!), which makes it even more amazing, don't you think?