Thursday, January 20, 2011

Have you stopped beating your wife yet?

As you may recollect, NPR had a fair and balanced debate between the Anti-Gun and Even-Antier-Gun sides the other day, in regards to McCarthy's shrill magazine ban bill.

As it turns out, prior to the show, a blogger of my acquaintance received the following email:

From: Matthew Baskin mdbaskin@gmail.com
To: XXXX
Sent: Fri, January 14, 2011 1:32:22 PM
Subject: NPR show On Point needing progressive gun guest

Hi Mr. Blogger,

My name is Matthew Baskin and I work for the NPR program On Point with Tom Ashbrook. I’m writing to ask if you’d be able to speak as a guest on Monday, January 17. We’re looking for a gun owner and 2nd Amendment supporter who is not opposed to the forthcoming McCarthy bill re: limiting magazine capacity. I’d be very grateful if you could put me in touch with any gun owner who is not opposed to regulation. Let me know if anyone comes to mind. Thanks very much.

Best,
Matthew Baskin


Which just goes to point out the Totally Unbiased nature of the debate.

Imagine the howls if the email had read "We’re looking for a civil-rights activist and 14th Amendment supporter who is not opposed to keeping the black man down just a little bit..."

Remember: Your tax dollars fund NPR. Be sure and let your elected congressthings know how happy that makes you...

20 comments:

Boat Guy said...

The first clue would be "progressive gun guest" - don't care if some "I'm a gun-owner and..." starts braying, the lines are drawn; "progressive" and all the other euphemisms for these socialists taking over our country are anethema to liberty-loving Americans.
Fight's on...

ViolentIndifference said...

But it's for the children!

Anonymous said...

I wonder if getting that much stupid slapped off at once hurts? Shame if it doesn't, and good on you for raising the act to a veritable art-form.

Jim

Anonymous said...

I had to read it twice just to make sure he was actually saying what he said...oh my.

aczarnowski said...

He's reaching out as an NPR representative from a Gmail address?

Anonymous said...

Well, they wouldn't want extremists on their show now, would they?

What you're saying, Tam, is that NPR is still NPR. Thanks for that. I never listen anymore, so I wouldnt know. I'd had 15 years of it already, which is more than enough for several lifetimes. I'm still in recovery. One day at a time... - Lyle

dave said...

You should volunteer. Either it'll be live, in which case you'll trash them, or it'll be taped, in which case you set them back a bit for time, and possibly get to set up a little bit of cognitive dissonance in one or more of the others.

Joseph said...

I would advise any gun blogger who wouldn't favor the mag ban to accept this invitation wholeheartedly and then when the show started, let them know in no uncertain terms exactly how they feel.

What are they gonna do, cry foul because you lied to them when they asked you if you'd play along with their agenda?

F NPR and the horse it road in on.

ViolentIndifference said...

I would go on and play along. Agree with them by stating that you want to prevent people from exercising their constitutional rights with a ridiculous ban. Then say: "That's what you want me to say, right? You wouldn't want me to express a view that conflicts with YOUR belief - you want a one sided debate. You wouldn't want to be fair and balanced, that is what FoxNews is for."

All four NPR listeners would be pretty upset.

Steve Skubinna said...

NPR has always offered a sincere and frank debate covering the entire spectrum of political opinion, from center-left to far left.

I consider them to provide the same sane, measured coverage of issues that The Nation does in print.

We're fortunate to have them, otherwise the right wing controlled media might not keep us informed of the issues still meaningful to the ongoing debate between Trotskyites and Stalinists.

Down with the Kulaks and the Wreckers, comrades! Up with the Stakhanovites!

Lissa said...

Why would they do anything else? They know what they think. They know what their audience will think. Why waste time and money tracking down and arguing an opposing viewpoint?

John said...

As sent to the miscreant:

I love NPR's many cultural contributions, including "Folk Sampler" and "African World Music", except when the news and editorial department engages in "transparently blatant news and opinion fixing".

You just tried a typical stunt, to load the deck on the gun-magazine capacity issue. So, in return, I propose that you have Noam Chomsky get equal time on the issue.

More to the point: the ownership of firearms entails a right of obligation: "in rem" basic law school. That right is a general right and extends to all voting citizens, which means that YOU must rise to the defense of your fellow citizens -- the innocent and defenseless -- whenever and where ever their life and security is threatened.

Er...ahh...would that be with a keyboard? No? Then perhaps a pencil? A harsh word? Perhaps detention after school?

Truth, my NPR firend, is that the 'gun control' community believes with a religious fervor that humanity may be improved, by depriving them of the means to do any harm to another human. That is a basic misunderstanding of the bad guys' nature. They don't care -- whether they are an individual, a gang, a religion, or a nation -- that you wish everyone would play nice. Those homo sapiens who initiate violence for fun, profit,and conquest will cheerfully put you head on a pike or sell you into slavery. They have been doing so for fun and profit since the beginning of time.

However, much more egregious than the predictable behavior of criminals, is your action in taking sides with and defending them. "WHAT!?" you say. Yuppers, yes you, my scheming and morally dishonest tool of the wanna-be-oppressive classes. I trust that someone with a sense of ethics in your organization has already taken you to the woodshed and spanked you, but it was prob'ly a supervisor that put you up to it. You may take personal satisfaction now, that to this point i was kinda neutral about NPR, DESPITE it's long-term and obvious bias. I really do like the classical and other music, in-depth reporting on obscure issues, and more pluses than i wish to scribble

However, now I'm contacting my congress-critters and saying: "End NPR now. They are a propaganda machine on my dime. Let them find work, where product veracity is requirement for continued employment."

Adios, and ya don't even rate a MF'r,with that.

Sincerely,

John, the Red

ViolentIndifference said...

John: Dude - If I gave a sh!t about facebook, I would want you as a friend.

Anonymous said...

One might be inclined to occasionally repost the letter to their comments page, as they seem diligent about scrubbing references to it.

Anonymous said...

Personally, I'm glad this NPR pinhead had to spam gun-related people to find one single articulate supporter of that idiotic bill. The streets must be full of such.

I like Dave's suggestion above^^^ for you to volunteer, Tam. I love seeing their heads 'splode!
Leatherneck

NotClauswitz said...

If they had to argue or entertain from a position of disbelief their brains would simply boil out the crankcase.

Anonymous said...

To those advocating Tam or others respond with a trojan horse ruse, you would have to listen to NPR's On The Media piece on just how those scintillating, urbane, quick-witted commentators and interviewers of theirs do it, or rather how they don't, to know that the on-air words of any guest would bear little resemblance to how and what she/he actually said once it was, you know, cleaned up and edited for brevity and all (unlike this sentence, eh?).

Truly eye-opening and worth looking it up to play back for those more industrious than me. Kudos to them for doing a pretty good hatchet job on their own folks by unmasking that smarmy smoothness that I love to hate about their on-air "personalities".

AT

Anonymous said...

"Hi! I'm from NPR, and we're looking for some people to help us scam our listeners - and, more broadly, the American people - by pretending to be on one side of an issue while actually being on the other. If you or somebody you know are willing to help us create some propaganda, please drop me a line."

Bah.

On the other hand, if the anti-gunners are reduced to this sort of pathetic dishonesty, then I'd have to say that we're winning the argument.

Anonymous said...

Found the link for that NPR "on the media" story that I referenced above, an episode titled "pulling back the curtain". When I heard it recently, it was (unknown to me at the time) a replay from several years ago in honor of the correspondent John Solomon who recently passed.

Certainly shows that any attempt to get in a few words of contempt on the air live ain't gonna fly.

It is also both heart-warming and disconcerting to hear the reality of the process as well as to understand the potential for abuse. Worth a listen; be sure to click on the mp3 version to get the full effect.

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2007/05/25/06

AT

Anonymous said...

It ought to be easy to find someone that is pro firearm but accepts the restrictions. Any armed criminal ought to like the better odds they will get since they will not care about the laws.