Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Q Tips

NPR related comments welcomed.
Posted by Mytwords at 6:00 AM
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20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aww isn't that nice. NPR reports this morning that George and Laura are moving into a swell neighborhood in Dallas with lots of other rich white people. It's going to be great. I hope those kids make it, I really do.

But seriously.

While the rest of the world is reckoning the Bush account of failure, death and discord NPR seems to be bent on delivering a daily blowjob to our appalling president. Why? What's in it for them?

1/14/09, 6:21 AM
Anonymous said...

If ya do wanna good guffaw over manufactured outrage à la NPR McNews, check the story & subsequent cavalcade of comments on this red hot topic, guaranteed to trump all other issues of the week!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99249669

Gotta give NoPR one thing - they sure know how to bait 'em (no pun intended?).

1/14/09, 7:30 AM
Anonymous said...

Can you imagine having Bush as a neighbor?

of course, probably all the other people in the neighborhood are a-holes just like him, so they probably get along just swell.

Instead of neighborhood pig roasts, they have Democrat roasts (quite literally)

It's hilarious that Bush was a "rancher" only as long as it served his purpose of appearing to be a "man of the land". We'll see how much brush he clears now that he's out of office.

The guy is about as phony as they come. In every regard, he is someone different from who he claims to be (including "reformed problem drinker")

1/14/09, 8:51 AM
Anonymous said...

Inskeep: [Some analysts say Hillary Clinton] is someone who is going to be biased towards Israel...

Tony Blair: ahhhm, not really

Chuckles then heard in my kitchen. But Inskeep was not at his worst here. He actually pressed Blair a bit on whether or not Clinton will be "respected" in the region outside of Israel.

1/14/09, 9:35 AM
Anonymous said...

Owl, your entry reminded me of a passage Wolcott wrote some years back regarding a Hilly speech at an AIPAC convention - something to the effect of appearing ready to squat and hatch a bunker-buster to express her concerns.

1/14/09, 10:07 AM
Anonymous said...

Renee defends the "parody" today. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/storyComments.php?storyId=99328389

1/14/09, 11:07 AM
Porter Melmoth said...

I don't think I'll say anything about God's Envoy to the Middle East (Toni Blare), as his plummy piffle is - well - unspeakable...

However...let's start an NPR Book Club!

NPR's need to project an elitist stance is regularly projected by their 'bookish' bent. You know, NPR really 'reads' a lot, and we the listeners are expected to do so, as well. (Providing that we adhere to NPR's recommendations.) To my mind, NPR's bookishness is even more cloying and silly than their attempts to be hip with music.

To prove their worth, NPR's Lynn Nearly Neary assesses Obama's readership capabilities, and she finds out that he's quite a reader! And he writes, too! (She also tells us, with a straight face, that none other than Karl Rove said that Dubya read 40 books last year. No mention as to whether they were Cliff Notes or 'a couple of Shakespeares'.) Anyway, it was just one of those smug segments to reassure us that, whatever the politicians are scanning or scribbling, we can be sure that National Propaganda Readers at our favorite radio station will be there to monitor, judge, and make pronouncements, as befitting their elite class. All they're doing in segments like this is showing off, and they think they have quite a knack for doing it without appearing too stuck-up. It's all part of the voluntary self-delusion that their corporate overlords love.

1/14/09, 11:24 AM
Unknown said...

Maine Owl, my local station WBUR follows ME with the BBC NewsHour. the contrast between Inskeep's shallow interview with Blair on today's ME and NewsHour's interviews with the Norwegian Foreign Minister and Syrian President Assad on Gaza was incredibly stark:

Faux News versus real journalism.

Murdoch doesn't need to buy No Public-interest Reporting; he already owns them in spirit.

1/14/09, 12:42 PM
Unknown said...

Argh, more wankery from New Propaganda for (Ayn) Rand in Adam Davidson's Planet Money blog post "Some Problems With Keynes"

Davidson says Keynes was an anti-Semite, anti-American, classist, and narrow-minded. He goes on to say:

"Now, I am not sure all of this is an argument against his ideas. (There are good arguments against his ideas, but ad hominems are always weak tea, as I imagine Keynes saying). I certainly don't think Mr. Obama should avoid a fiscal stimulus because the guy who came up with the idea is a bit of a jerk. (Again, there are other arguments against fiscal stimulus, but jerkiness doesn't merit serious consideration).

But I do find it worth noting that Keynes, hero to so many union members and working class folks around the world, was an elitist, socially conservative snob who wouldn't find it pleasant to spend even a moment with the people who support his ideas the most."

I have to ask: why is this worth noting? What relevance does it have to economic policy, other than as an ad-hominem attack on the Keynesian school of economics?

1/14/09, 1:08 PM
Anonymous said...

Yeah, Steve. And - at the risk of sounding "ad-hominem" - Ahhhdam Daaavidson is just another one of those whiny NoPR she-males I often rail about here.

And you can tell 'im I said so, too!

1/14/09, 1:45 PM
Porter Melmoth said...

Did The Adam also mention Keynes' gay/bisexual orientation? (Connected to elitism, no doubt. Elitism - I was just yakking about that above...)

1/14/09, 1:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Meeeeeee-shell interviews a BushCo shill today. "How do we know they won't return to terrorism . . ." Gawd!

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99361691

1/14/09, 4:18 PM
Anonymous said...

Planet Money is bloody awful. NPR dumbs it down for the younger, dumber and more conservative audiences. NPR's days seem numbered to me.

1/14/09, 4:19 PM
Anonymous said...

NPR's theme-related news and book obsessions are maddening.

1/14/09, 4:20 PM
Anonymous said...

"Planet Money is bloody awful."

I'll second that.

These are the guys who were fear mongering (talking about "economic collapse", etc) to get the bailout passed.

One could easily have come to the conclusion that they were being paid by Paulson for their stories.

NPR has added many moronic programs in recent times (apparently they have a lot of money to throw around) and Planet Money is definitely one of the stupidest.

1/14/09, 6:57 PM
Shimmy said...

Thank you for an outstanding blog!

1/14/09, 8:55 PM
Anonymous said...

On Morning Edition there was a story on Where Does The Oath of Office Come From?, where Inskeep responded to the idea that the presidential oath specified the subordination to the Constitution:
"Which is significant I suppose because in future generations, presidents um, will have this dilemma: "Do I do what I think is best for the country, or do I follow the law even if I don't think it is best for the country- do I break the law? There are presidents constantly wrestling with that dilemma."

Wow. Yeah, what a tough standard to ask from an elected official, to follow rule of law and be bound by it, since you know, the president isn't a king. Another person (Grumpy Demo) in the comments pointed out that violating the Constitution is pretty much the standard of what is bad for the country.

1/14/09, 10:22 PM
Anonymous said...

Are you serious?

Army Ramps Up Repairs To Fix Battered Equipment? CLOCKWORK PR

Dear Sir or Madam,
It's like this: almost everyday I wake up and hear something on NPR that sounds like it was cooked-up in some whacked Pentagon PR press room. Another story showed up today, like clockwork:
Army Ramps Up Repairs To Fix Battered Equipment

by JJ Sutherland

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99336704

Is this something the American Populace is dying to hear about? Or some lame TALKING POINTS that Pentagon PR is pushing on our taxpayer-funded news sources?

The question is this, and it is a basic one: Why the fuck should any NPR listeners want to hear about how some rednecks in Texarkana repair Humvees? No disrespect to Texas or Arkansas, or the guys doing the work. Disrespect to the lame-ass flacks who are doing the NPR propagandizing. Wake up!

Cheers,

Benoit Balz

1/15/09, 12:15 AM
Anonymous said...

Grumpy Demo (on the NPR blog) is generally pretty good.

1/15/09, 9:00 AM
Anonymous said...

Inskeep "Do I do what I think is best for the country, or do I follow the law even if I don't think it is best for the country- do I break the law? There are presidents constantly wrestling with that dilemma."

Here we are presented with 2 possibilities:

Either

1) Inskeep is as dumb as they come and actually believes what he says.

or
2) Inskeep is as dishonest as they come and actually does not believe what he says.

1/15/09, 9:19 AM

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