Wednesday, January 09, 2008

A Break

Folks, I think I need a respite from listening to NPR. I'll try to be sure that the Open Thread is up for comments. As before if anyone is interested in writing for NPR Check, drop me an email. Thanks.

7 comments:

Porter Melmoth said...

Yup, retiring (for a time or a lifetime) from the dismal failure that is NPR is a prudent move. It's always a good time to do so. There's so much to complain about, it's a shame to waste one's energy on a hopeless cause. Whether it's Ann Garrels back in Baghdad, sounding meaner than ever (she's gonna get back at us for what we did!!), or Missy Block prancing through some insipid 'report' with some NH women who offer breathtakingly vacuous responses to Hillary Clinton's rather unremarkable 'emotional outburst', or Gwen Thompkins actually playing it straight from Kenya, or ---
(Sorry if I sound misogynistic here; I'm not that way at all - these are only SOME of the complaints I have about NPR, ones that come easily to mind, which have nothing whatsoever to do with gender; OK, I've covered my ass, hopefully...)

Anyway, all this adds up to NPR being a rather worthless and dubious source for easy-access news. Oh, they try in some departments, but their validity has passed them by. Funny, now that they're swimming in money, the rot is shown like its never been shown before.

I suppose I'll still toss out a couple of darts now and then, but I agree with Mytwords' burnout. The stark reality is that NPR is a writeoff. I mean it REALLY IS a writeoff.

Anonymous said...

Oh, boo. I can certainly understand why it's getting more and more intolerable (sheesh, wasn't that just like Missy-poo to add in her McReport that cookies were being handed out at a voting precinct in NH?!?) but sadly, who else is gonna do it? THIS is where I come to know what latent crapola they've been spewing forth without having to suffer myself (sorry). Well aware my place is in the peanut gallery; I could never hope to be as astute as the keeper(s) of this blog and besides my disdain of NPR is primal, unforgiving, and impetuously biased; I suppose the reason we even bother to express ourselves here is because "we want to believe in them, we rilly rilly do." But that seems unlikely to happen "(nasal voice) anytime soon".

May I cast my vote to let Porter M have the keys to the kingdom here? - yes, he keeps his own savory blog which cross-posts here when on-topic, but it'd be swell if he could have the credentials to create his own headings, images, etc. (though it'd be a tall order to conjure up these wacky clip-arts!)

Lastly, my brief,sporadic synapse jolts regarding recent news items:

a) Hillary's "cry-op" - umm, and was that about controversy surrounding a planted question about a month ago?... Sure did seem she had undergone an instantaneous change in tenor (that backdrop of pastry displays didn't hurt either). And what was that about "not wanting the country to go backwards"? Ahem, Kyl-Lieberman...

b) Iran "provocation" on the high seas - the words "Gulf of Tonkin" came to mind.

c) Garrulous is back in 'dad, ya say? No doubt she stocked up on CamoPrada over the holidays~

nyuk nyuk bunny out

Anonymous said...

EARTH to MATT: Do not throw in the towel yet--I am with you, bro'!

ALL THINGS CONSIDERED - JANUARY 9, 2008 - CAUSES, DEFINING MOMENTS LINE ROAD TO SC PRIMARY.

Racist/Elitist Analysis at NPR

Folks, the following passes for sober analysis:

David Brooks: "...Obama catered to what you might call the Whole Foods/Starbucks set, upscale: he did very well among college-educated, up the income ladder, who want a more sensibility-drenched sort of politics. Hillary Clinton did very well among the Wal-Mart people, who want good products at good prices. She did very well with high school educated, very well with union households, very well with people making less than $50,000 a year, and she offered them a laundry list of deliverables, and those people stuck with her. And the fascinating thing to me is democratic races, year-after-year, are all the same: you get an upscale candidate versus a high school educated candidate, and inevitably, the high school educated candidate's the one who wins those people ends up winning the nomination. This time is a little more complicated, because for the first time, the upscale candidate, the Starbucks candidate, Obama, is African-American, and he could get those people."

My Comments: WTF! What an elitist/racist quadrilateral, astronomical s.o.b. of a bigot is David Brooks!!! (I'm paraphrasing Wm Dean Howells, now). But in every quadrilateral, astronomical, s.o.b. of a bigot's yelpings, there lies a kernel of truth, since, as we all know, "Clinton served on Wal-Mart’s board for six years prior to her husband’s run for the presidency." [See: "Hillary Clinton and Wal-Mart: A Love Story," by Jonathan Tasini, Link: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0207-34.htm] And then there's the Whole Foods (Unions are like herpes...) and Starbucks thing, see: http://www.iww.org/en/node/3879.

Link to NPR Multimedia Stream (Playable on most mediaplayers): mms://wm.npr.org/wm.npr.na-central/npr/atc/2008/01/20080109_atc_02.wma?v1st=CE46F88CB149F742&mt=7

Link to page: http://thin.npr.org/s.php?sId=17970198&rId=2&x=1

Disclaimer: I endorse none of the top-tier candidates (and I am not even sure I believe Edwards), and wish they'd all go get drowned together.

Regards,

Flavio

Anonymous said...

My 2 cents:
In case you wonder if anyone is reading, I am!
I do enjoy the wit here.
But I can certainly understand the feeling of frustration too.
Altho pre-NPR Check, I was already highly skeptical of National Pentagon Radio, post-NPR Check - I am much more aware of the nuances of their idiocy.

Regards to you all,
ellen

Anonymous said...

Ya gotta see this!
Hysterical.

http://satiricalpolitical.com/


(go to Jan 10)

Porter Melmoth said...

Boy, it's heartwarming to see all the feedback to Mytwords' 'threat' to wrap this turkey up. I'm sure he's just taking a breather. Air gets to be a priority after being submerged in the putrefaction of NPR's atmospheric pollution.

Most kind of you, b!p!f!b! to suggest me as something akin to heir apparent blogmaestro in MYW's mysterious absence, but I'm afraid I'm far too superficial to read the lurid tealeaves of NPR's big fat daily BS. Plus, yes, I've got my own blogling to nurture, and I've been a deadbeat dad to it.
As Mickey Rourke said in 'Barfly', to be a professional drunk, 'It takes STAMINA!' (bad comparison, but accurate bottom line).
I'm just glad that in this austere but intellectually stimulating community, there's so much healthy skepticism and criticism for NPR which has turned out to be the most blatantly misbehaved of all public trusts. Rupert Murdoch, PLEASE take over NPR in hostile fashion, so that a new and honest public news service might be created from scratch, and with public involvement! Please, pretty please, Perfect Lord God Emperor Murdoch??

I'm sure, in the long run, there will be enough stamina for us to, uh, as Dubya himself might say, stand up while they (NPR) stand down. Or something like that.

Oh, and I CANNOT STAND DAVID 'SNAGGLETOOTH' BROOKS MORE THAN EVER. Ever since he suggested that we 'pray for President Bush' those long years ago, he has been on my Severely Invalidated List. Like most of the National Pentagon (I like that, Ellen!) Radiation drones.

Anonymous said...

Ugh, gag me with the TV remote! - Mister McBobo, the Intellectually Nearsighted Pundit (as lovingly rendered by Tom Tomorrow)

Along with the likes of Bill Kristol et.al. these ubiquitous cretins, despite not flaunting the most admirable track records as far as their lunkheaded prognostications go, just keep a-comin' and comin', promotion after promotion, segment after segment - Is escape really that futile?

And yes, perhaps we should start an online petition appealing to ol' Rupie Moloch to swallow up Enn-Pee-Arr into his ever-expanding evil black hole.