I'm going to fink on Shootin' Buddy: He listens to NPR in his truck a lot. Which means that, when I'm in his truck, I listen to the news from The Land Through The Looking Glass, too.
It's sort of like an auditory version of HuffPo, for those of you who don't indulge. The news is interspersed with entertainment programs where liberals will sit around and feel better than other people, which is apparently a big source of comedy for collectivists; I guess because it feels risque after a hard week of struggling for social justice with other people's money. And then there's this one where some deadly dull guy from frickin' Minnesota comes on and tells stories about paint drying and grass growing, which triggers laughter in the studio audience, for some reason, I guess because they all secretly wish they were in New York.
Anyway, back to the news on NPR: Thanks to a commenter in this post, I was led to this editorial in the Lincoln JournalStar, which seems to be decrying a certain even more TASS-like turn at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Your tax dollars at work, comrades!
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Well, I suppose it's important to know what lies the other side is promulgating with our tax dollars.
My Dad listened to NPR too. And he was anything but a liberal.
Listening to NPR now is akin to the troops listening to "Tokyo Rose" and/or "Axis Sally" in WWII. My local affiliate of NPR in Richmond, Kentucky features broadcasts of BBC news, apparently two or more times each day. I think staff at Pravda might actually blush at the thought of twisting the truth as much as NPR does on any given day.
If you haven't, tune in to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me"...the smarmy condescension fairly drips from the radio speakers and the venal hatred is barely concealed, but as anon says, is a source of sick and twisted hilarity even as it irritates and galls your innards and explodes your brain.
AT
Tax money has no business subsidising media for U. S. consumption.
NPR is an established press, with all the benefits and harms of an established Church.
Even (especially) if the established Church is a really good one.
(I confess, NPR has plenty of worth while programs. If I had to have a single radio station available, it would be NPR if only for the variety and quality.) /auto-da-fe/
"...some deadly dull guy from frickin' Minnesota comes on and tells stories about paint drying and grass growing."
Amen.
I had to live in Minnesota for 13 years and 2 weeks. And the thing is, Minnesotans don't realize this deadly dull guy is MAKING FUN OF THEM.
NPR has been creeping into areas that people were making money for years. There was a bit of a stink several years back when they increased the amount of programming devoted to adult contemporary music (or whatever the classification was; stuff that wasn't jazz, classical or hopelessly obscure).
But, I don't bother with their news for the same reasons I don't read the local paper or watch CNN. Keeps my blood pressure manageable.
I'm going to declare my home as an inefficient government agency. I could use $420 million. Look at Amtrak-now that's efficient! (Sarcasm)
I work in a university television broadcast setting (but we're not PBS). With one exception, everyone in our department is conservative or at least right of center. Adjacent to my engineering shop on the same floor is the local university NPR affiliate radio station. Staffed almost exclusively with the soft spoken, calm voiced, Earth & Sky types.
Every person working in the radio station will look you right in the eye and, without a hint of insincerity, tell you that there is no bias in public radio.
They don't like me pointing and laughing.
There is one program on the Peoples Radio that I like, "Car Talk".
Memo to NPR;
If you've lost the Lincoln Journal-Star, you've lost America.
I lived in Lincoln for a number of years (sons still do) and the LJ-S is more than a little leftward-leaning in the Editorial pages - and in the "news section as well unless they've cleaned up their act. They've got real-live journos alright but the vast majority are writing from the same "perspective". I used to write letters to the Editor (which in fairness I'll note were usually published) when they'd go on one of their "nasty 'ol guns" tears
I like NPR quite a bit. I'm capable of listening to and enjoying people who don't always agree with me.
You're obviously a very sophisticated person.
My final year in the Army was spent living in the NCO Quarters at Camp Stanley, Korea. We had basic cable in every room. (Full if you wanted to pay for a converter box.) It came with "satellite radio" and I wound up listening to the NPR International channel more than watching TV, because they had decent programming, including a lot of jazz, classical, and the Shamrock and Thistle show.
But, yeah, there were definitely a lot of their people who would be amused to learn that a soldier might be listening. (Of course, that was the tail end of the Clinton era...)
Where's the equivalent of NPR for non-lefties? I can't stand to listen to blowhards like Hannity, Rush, Savage, et. al. but I can't stand the slimy Manhattanite condescension of Renee Montagne, Garrison Keillor, and Carl Kasell.
Does middlebrow conservative radio exist?
I used to listen to the Cleveland NPR affiliate quite a bit, until they decided that people needed to hear left-wing chat instead of jazz during the day. I still listen to some of the jazz programming at night, because the local college radio is great for indie rock, bluegrass, and blues (among much else), but not so much for jazz. Commercial radio is a jazz wasteland unless your idea of jazz is Chuck Mangione, who I can stand only on King of the Hill.
Kent State's NPR affiliate is excellent for classical music, but there's a commercial classical station here (WCLV-FM 104.9) and I typically listen to that.
@AZMike, I generally agree with your assessment of the named hosts (though taken as an entertainer, Limbaugh is just tolerable). I suppose you could try the Salem radio guys: Bill Bennett, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved, Hugh Hewitt. Fair warning, though: Bennett and Hewitt in particular are GOP cheerleaders, not genuine conservatives, and all four are more "I want my preferences read into law over those of the durn hippies" types than actual people of principle.
Sorry, I forgot Laura Ingraham (nothing to do with her -- I just never -- literally never -- listen to the radio at 10am, always doing something else then).
Not NPR--it's NLR--National Liberal Radio
No, no, not the nasty L-word; NPR is National Progressive Radio.
Nice to see the good comrade talking heads are all pulling down 350K with the help of my tax dollars, funny you never hear that during the beg-a-thon pledge drives.
NPR? Never listened past my firs exposure. Even in the Dark Ages when I was a liberal.
FTB: "And then there's this one where some deadly dull guy from frickin' Minnesota comes on and tells stories about paint drying and grass growing, which triggers laughter in the studio audience, for some reason,"
Cut to Homer Simpson, puonding on his TV which is showing PHC - "Be more funny!!!!"
That deadly dull guy from Minnesota was mildly funny when his shtick was new. But, that was thirtyfive or forty years ago. He's been milking the same three jokes ever since, and he has a core audience that is conditioned to laugh at whatever he presents. He started getting vicious when he realized that people were laughing at him rather than his jokes. His "humor" is a caricature preserved in amber of small town Minnesota circa 1955.
A shot-gunner friend of mine from Minnesota calls that cud-chewing guy with the dull-talking, paint-drying stories transplanted into Manhattan nastiness, being "Minnesota Nice." It's not really nice, it's homespun homicidal.
I used to listen to it, I used to inhale too.
How noble of you, Tam, to listen to NPR so the rest of us don't HAVE to.
Ken, thanks for the suggestions. I found a station that broadcasts those hosts near me (though they also have the insufferable Dennis Miller Show that I will avoid).
As an aside to those of you complaining about your tax dollars being used to fund NPR -- they only get about 2% of their money from the FedGov's CPB. The rest comes from pledge drives and memberships and such.
AZMike,
Go read the editorial to which I linked:
"By comparison, in 2008, the average public radio station received 10.1 percent of its funding from the federal government. Another 5.6 percent comes from state and local governments and other federal sources.
About 32.1 percent comes from listeners in the form of pledges, memberships and other donations."
StarDate is a pretty neat program. I suppose for the amount of tax dollars they receive, we deserve two or three minutes worth of actual content a day.
In my area, the strong NPR signal is WNYC, the heart of the beast.
WNYC isn't truly "public", and isn't subsidized by the state. Years back, they bought their own license from the city, believing that relying on voluntary donations (uncertain as that is) was preferable to letting themselves be beholden to political interests.
All of which put a pretty entertaining cast on their shilling for government healthcare.
I think the last straw for NPR for me was the little BBC bits they started playing, always followed by sweet Dolores Umbridge signing off with "BBC... free of commercial or political bias."
tee.
At least back Tennessee way they had some wonderful local music shows... and Thistle and Shamrock. So the lineup wasn't all bad.. but you can get just as good as the best of it online now, without the annoying parts.
PBS/NPR = Constitutional or no, they're obsolete. And have been for at least ten years.
Even the farthest left journalist turns into the bastard child of Jay Gould and Hetty Green when his own personal revenues are endangered.
some deadly dull guy from frickin' Minnesota comes on and tells stories about paint drying and grass growing.
He's even worse in print. (Thank you, San Antonio Express-News! /sarcasm ...) Seriously, I don't know if he's trying to translate the "humor" from his radio show to his print column, but the whole effort to do so is made of weapons-grade FAIL.
red said: "There is one program on the Peoples Radio that I like, "Car Talk"."
The Tappets are some funny guys...just try to avoid their politics; sadly, on NPR they are exactly where they want to be.
AT
Garrison Keiler mouth-breathes into the microphone. It's the most annoying shit ever.
"And there were chickens running around Old Bill's place..."
HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH
"And the chickens were watching the paint dry on the side of Bill's house..."
HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEH
It's because he learned the ole announcer's trick of proximity effect, where your voice sounds deeper if you are close to the mic., but didn't figure out you have to turn your head to wheeze if you are a mouth-breathing dullard.
Cripes, I hate that show.
Car Talk: The "Tappets" are as enthusiastic a pair of shills for the joys of collectivization, and the evils of Anthropogenic Glowball Warmening and capitalism as exist.
OTOH, the take-off if them done in (IIRC) Muzzleloader magazine (Bevel Up/Bevel Down) was hilarious.
WV: delest. Short for "NPR Delenda est."
In a segment on a "Ladies of the Night" comedy CD, Diane Ford talks about the small town she grew up in, in Minnesota. Some 3/4 of the 1800 souls are relatives. They all look like her. Its awesome.
Then Ms. Ford commented on her ancestors, journeying from Europe, crossing oceans and mountains and deserts, until they found their destination, that one spot . . .
That was just as @#$! miserable as the place they left behind. Well, they found Minnesota, which is Indian for "Weather sucks big Wampum".
I think she just made up that part, about what Minnesota means.
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