Oh, did you mean "Small Things Considered?" Srsly, I could no longer stand that pretentious, snooty, disdainful claptrap all the way back in the 1990s. Harry Shearer did a good sendup of Robert whatzizname---Siegel, the longtime host, on his "CPR---Continental Public Radio" on his 'Le Show.'
Now, please Gods, make Marco Worm-Man Werman of "The World" go away too.
It is a little-known fact that George Miller was a practicing surgeon before he became a film director and was inspired to create the MAD MAX series by the gruesome messes he had to clean up after Australian road accidents. He is also one of those Greek Australians you don't know too much about if you're not Australian, but are the reason why you can get really good Greek food in Australia.
I used to enjoy Story Corps (Core?) until it made me cringe along with the rest of the show. I used to listen to NPR daily until I couldn't overlook the bias any longer.
Yes, Matt, you hit this one right out of the park. I stopped listening to public radio several years ago when I could take no more. NPR is the very worst virtue signaler of wokedom on the planet. At least with the NY Times, I can skip over the columnists that make my flesh crawl: Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Spenser Bokat Lindel, Jennifer Boylan, Kara Swisher, Roxanne Gay, the entire Editorial Board, and others. But with public radio, as soon as I turn it on, I'm subjected to every hectoring, double hyphenated do-gooder on their roster. My only escape is not to turn it on in the first place.
NPR used to be one of my prime news sources, but it's become so ridiculous it seems like an SNL skit. After some recent local election here in LA, they described the winner as "only the fifth woman of color to hold the post". I couldn't stop laughing.
Another tough (and false) one that was way over the line was a local Minnesota Public Radio piece where the reporter slipped into the claims of the protesters, and instead of reporting them repeated them. "Here in a city where police kill so many black men each day" or some similar phrasing to intro a discussion.
This is a city (Minneapolis), where police kill ~1 person a year, and roughly half the time that person is black. So "one every other year", becomes "so many each day". Even if you extend it to the whole metro, the numbers don't get close to even 1/month and are even less proportionally black.
And this is during the protests. No wonder people believe all sorts of non-factual shit.
You would think that only black people are shot and killed by police. To the count of roughly 1,000 a year. Also, to listen to most media is a constant confusion of measures, raw numbers, various percentages of something such as population, numeric comparisons in numbers and rates between groups are all thrown out without labeling what the number stands for.
The old "what bleeds leads" has morphed into "what's black (or other grouping of the SJW moment) and bleeds leads." And once the lead is given, nothing else is given.
So, what about all the white deaths by gun by police?
Oh, none, you say?
News covers events as they show up, not percentages by population part, except ....
First, the category of deaths:
1 - by police
2 - by method - in this example, by shooting
Second, the raw numbers by category + multiples and rates:
(Note, the numbers are very close for 2017,2018, 2019 and 2020 - the last I looked up June 4th of last year and haven't updated it.)
You will note that just about 2 white people were shot and killed by police for every black person, except for 2019 when it was 1.57 times)
Also note that statistical data is not always recorded by police (surprise /s) so we also have "Other" and "Unknown" categories.
White: 457 (2.04 times black deaths in raw numbers or 987/457=2.15 times less than (or 46% of) population representation. 2.55 times "Hispanic" category)
Black: 223 (adjusted per capita * 5.74 = 1281 or almost 3 times more (2.8) than whites, proportional would be 39 or 223/39=5.7 times population representation)
Hispanic: 179 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 795 or 1.7 times more, proportional would be 40)
Other: 44
Unknown: 84
2018: (996 total)
White: 399 (1.91 times black deaths in raw numbers or 996/399=2.49 times less than (or 40% of) population representation. and 2.7 times Hispanic)
Black: 209 (adjusted per capita * 5.74 = 1201 or 3 times more than whites, proportional would be 36 or 209/36=5.8 times population representation)
Hispanic: 148 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 657 or 1.6 times more, proportional would be 33)
Other: 36
Unknown: 204
2019: (1,004 total)
White: 370 (1.57 times black deaths in raw numbers or 1004/370=2.7 times less than (or 37% of) population representation and 2.34 times Hispanic)
Black: 235 (adjusted * 5.74 = 1350 or 3.6 times more than whites, proportional would be 41 or 235/41=5.7 times population representation)
Hispanic: 158 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 702 or 1.9 times more, proportional would be 36)
Other: 39
Unknown: 202
2020 - (429 so far as of June 4th):
White: 172 (1.95 times black deaths in raw numbers or 429/172=2.49 times less than (or 40% of) population representation and 3 times Hispanic)
Black: 88 (adjusted * 5.74 = 506 or 2.9 times more than whites, proportional would be 15 or 88/15=5.9 times population representation)
Hispanic: 57 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 253 or 1.5 times more, proportional would be 13)
Other: 14
Unknown: 98
In other words, most media are actively (determinedly) providing a very unbalanced
I also should have used PEBT. "Person Experiencing Bigoted Thoughts"
I want to apologize and admit I made a mistake and I'm going to Do The Work to become a better person by annoying every minority I personally know for the next two months by constantly bringing up the mistake.
Ha. Meant to also note that as much as racism is front, center and huge, "racism" as such is not causitive. Otherwise we are left with no way to explain similar police versus public behavior where differences in race are not there (such as all black or all white or all something else). In that sense, using "racism" is more distraction than explanation, more a targeting vector, than a real reason which may be why it is such a wack-a-mole effort to go after. We are after a resulting symptom, which is so large it obscures causes.
And, (really, pun not intended) more than black people have "skin in the game" as the saying goes. Concentrating on racism as a cause gives greater anxiety for one set of people thinking it is just them and diminished recognition for another set of people thinking it is actually someone else's problem.
I have a Canadian friend who believes it is a scandal that the US has not yet elected a woman president. I speculated that could change if Caitlyn Jenner ran for president and won. Radio silence.
Eh? Canada didn't even elect its only female Prime Minister - she took over from Brian Mulroney when he resigned - and she was roundly defeated when she actually tried.
I tell all of my Canadian friends that it must feel awfully comfortable in a mostly white country with less than a quarter of the US population and SUCK IT.
Which is freaking choice with Justin Hairdeau having appointed the granddaughter of one of WW II's top Ukrainian Nazis as Deputy PM.
Chrystia Freeland's "Papa" was Michael Chomiak, one of the Nazis hustled by the OSS, etc to Canada along with so many other Nazi criminals in the post-WW II "Get out of Your Firing Squad Free" card times. Little Chrystia worked for his newspaper in Alberta growing up, promoting typical Nazi stuff. Alberta, the land of Ukrainian Nazi statuary, even in downtown Calgary, ffs! And now lil' Ms Freeland is poised for real power with her Russia-hating firmly a part of her makeup. OBTW, she's married to a fellow Russia-hating NYT reporter. How sweet it is....!
Removed? She wasn't removed. She grew up working with him on his paper in Alberta. This little apple fell from the same tree. What's funny is her own mother was antithetical to her father in her personal politics.
I know nothing about her and have never heard of her, but mentioning her grandfather struck me as odd. If she's that bad there surely must be some appalling articles she penned while working at that paper. Did she write about a final solution for some problem that has been buggind her? Maybe there's something she said? Perhaps a few sieg-heils while marching down main street? The worst you can say about her is who her grandfather was?
No, not at all. There is plenty about her to say. A neocon in Liberal clothing. One of the worst. She only got her position/career-climb at the expense of U.S.-Russian relations. She was chosen for her 'attributes' of Russophobia.
"This is the way America was started", “ This is not something that has not ever happened before, this is so terrible and where are we, and these savages and all of that. That's how this country was started”
I'm fortunate enough that the news-only local NPR station in my area runs the BBC World Service all day long weekdays except when Morning Edition and All Things Considered air, so I can just get actual news most of the day. (Okay, the Beeb has its problems with wokeness, too, but they don't seem to have gotten into most of what the World Service puts out.) They run it a lot of the time on weekends, too, but then it's mostly football (in the British sense).
And how many willing lemmings are waiting in the wings, should one of the established mouthpieces have a change of heart? Would it affect the overall trajectory? Of course not. It's easy to justify why you should stay on and earn the money and go to the parties. You just have to say what the "leaders" want, it's easy!
Not sure about NYT but The Atlantic somehow needs 50 million per year to break even. I have no idea why they are burning through so much money.
> “The Atlantic needs to make $50 million in annual subscription revenue in order to break even, according to Thompson. Hitting that target has become more complicated since Trump left the White House and the pandemic let up. New subscribers are coming in at about a quarter of the rate they did last year (10,000 a month, on average), and the magazine faces challenges keeping some of its existing audience, which may have less of a need for The Atlantic’s journalism in a post-Trump, post-Covid world. Without Trump or the pandemic, the path to $50 million is significantly harder. Since February, the magazine has brought in about 10,000 subscribers a month — roughly analogous to its growth rate before the pandemic. Meanwhile, its retention rate for existing subscribers is about 75 to 80 percent, Thompson said. The net result, according to Thompson’s presentation, is not growth. It’s a static or slightly declining ..."
Together, Joe Scarboro and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe earned an unbelievable $16 million in 2018. Their combined net worth back then was just under $50 million.
I think the NYT said somewhere that they start columnists at around $100K, +/-. Dunno how how that works out in terms of columns /week. Some are twice a week, some are weekly, some every 2 weeks or less.
Good lord, she's awful. And apparently unacquainted with basic research methodology. She really seems to take one bit of info and extrapolate from that out of her ass. And gets it so wrong.
Blow is stupid. I like kristof he is simple practical feet on the ground reporting of mundane daily life trials and tribulations- i greatly respect that
He's apparently mulling running for Governor of Oregon. I'm with Jack Shafer here (who's gotten in some nice digs in other columns too)-
"Will he connect with Oregon voters on the stump, or will he repel them by acting like he’s on a book tour raining his standard sanctimony on the masses? "
Up here in Canada, the same phenomenon has been happening with our NPR equivalent CBC Radio. A decade ago, i was a huge proponent for CBC and used to listen regularly by air and podcast - i even wrote my MP and asked them to advocate for increasing their funding and adding a new local station in our area.
But - and here's something you've never heard before anywhere else - several years ago something changed. They kinda snapped. They stopped being thoughtful omnivorous examiners of culture, and made a hard left turn into the ditch of nonstop white-knuckled cultural enforcers. It's their duty, you see, to tell you how you should be thinking and acting, self-righteous fucking Daniel Tiger for grownup-ass shit. Now every time i start my car and catch the 10 seconds before my bluetooth kicks in, they're talking about one of three things: race, trans, or covid. (And often they are mashing them all together into one Voltron of whinging). There is *nothing else*. The repetition is maddening - literal preachers are less preachy than this! Unless you've got the Memento disease, it's totally unlistenable. Kinda sad.
All over the western world, former liberals have become the moral majority. It is actually quite funny, especially if you don't have kids and you aren't in athletics, entertainment, media or education. If you are in any of these, it probably isn't funny.
Brilliant comment! You nailed it with the ONLY three topics in the world that we should obsess over all day every day, Covid, Trans, Race (not necessarily in that order). Almost as if they are trying to program people with the repetition...
You would think that trans folks would eventually get tired of this shit as well. I am waiting for some trans folks to start calling this shit out. We will see if it ever happens. If it is all about power, they never will.
Some definitely have. Jenn Smith in Canada and Miranda Yardley both come to mind. But there definitely need to be more. Because in the long run, this agenda actually harms transgenders.
You'd think, as "regular people" (purportedly), they'd reject the thesis that their "right" (of 00.003% of the population) to "feel better" by going into the less-practical (for them) bathroom facilities trumps the feelings of the 99.97% of women who do not have beards or testicles and do not want such people, however they identify, into their "gender safe spaces".
Doesn't this seem irrational to anyone else?? As just a practical matter?? Common sense? As a matter of "kindness and respect for all", shouldn't the few male-presenting "women" take one for the team and do the right thing instead of forcing THEIR rights over what everyone else wants?
Or are they saying that prior to 2014 no trans people ever went to the bathroom? I suspect we are seeing the rigid adherence to dogma of a couple of hundred "super trans" academics being presented as the actual preference of a whole "oppressed community", when it is not. I know when I worked with M2F trans folks, they handled it by going to the bathroom that had stand-up urinals. They may have felt weird about it, but I'm pretty sure they did it that way out of respect for the wishes of the women at that workplace. Somehow, that consideration is not part of the dogma that must be rigidly followed by the trans activists of today.
it isn't about doing what is right. that went out the window long ago. It is about forcing an ideology on everyone. Like rubbing shit in your face. It is about power. When trans folks themselves start calling this shit out, then we are on the path to fixing this hole mess.
When I arrived in Canada 31 years ago. The CBC radio was my daily companion where I learnt about all things Canadian and good news reporting from around the world, Then some years later it turned into a smug provider of politically correct opinions, the foreign corespondents were gone. I stopped listening and now begrudge every dime of my taxes that pay for it.
I am anti-Democrat and anti-anti-racist for the most part, but I still see a Republican Party firmly in the grasp of a racist Trump cult. A pox on both their houses.
I used to listen to NPR religiously in the 80s when I worked the graveyard shift at a local hospital. I loved their nightly segment featuring Afro-pop. Then in the 90s, they dumped the music and re-branded as Victim Radio. No purported identity group is too small or ephemeral not to warrant a one hour sentimental 'centering' of its deep pain and psychic woundedness; no alleged injustice so slight or self-imposed that it can't be called a systematic human rights catastrophe; no broken finger-nail so trivial that it can't be seen as traumatic deserving of a lifetime of taxpayer supported therapy. The world of NPR is filled with hapless victims of a faceless soul-crushing global system whose daily struggle against the horror and indignity of its marginalization is the subject of hours on hours on hours of somnolent chronicling by self-indulgent bourgeoise puritans. What would we do without NPR? I mean what other broadcaster would have blown the lid off the great national scandal of neighborhood shade inequality?
I too Googled it. Found an article in (where else) The Guardian entitled "How America’s treeless streets are fueling inequality". I shit you not. Ya want shade? Plant a fuckin' tree, moron.
«The Guardian entitled "How America’s treeless streets are fueling inequality". I shit you not. Ya want shade? Plant a fuckin' tree, moron.»
The title is cretinous, but it is a distortion of a very real issue: there are studies that show that the more a suburb has got trees, the higher the real estate values, and the suburbs with no trees (and house gardens) have the lowest real estate values. The reason is really simple: trees take space that could be be use for denser and thus cheaper houses. Trees increase profits only if the prospective buyers are affluent enough to pay a premium for living in a nice areas.
The relationship may only be coincidental. Developers will typically scalp a lot prior to installation of a new foundation, then over-plant afterword in order create landscape density. In five years, homeowners will have to remove many of the trees bec of crowding. The property value is related to the improvement. The trees do not add value, but rather enhance the property's aesthetic appeal to promote sales just like how real estate agents put fake furniture in an empty house.
High density residential developments (apts., condos, townhomes) will naturally have fewer trees because they don't have private lawns. Zero lot line townhomes at best may have room for a single small ornamental. In Dallas, the most expensive properties in the city are the downtown and adjacent high rise condos as a trip to realtor.com will show. Few homes in the vast swath of treed burbs in the DFW Metro come close. But when you average together the value of those properties with apartments and more modest townhomes, those values are quite a bit lower. When you parse out the high end condos, what you find is that zero trees are correlated with the most expensive residential properties.
Not to belabor the point, but if you are looking for "inequity" you will always find it because "equity" is relative. it just depends on perspective. Middle class people and bourgeois wannabes in the post war period made no secret of their desire to progressively trade up to nicer neighborhoods. Today people seem a little embarrassed to admit that, but that desire is still a powerful motivation. I show up on time to work, try to do my best so I can advance, spend my money wisely and avoid debt so I can move to a leafy neighborhood with a better class of people. I'm not talking here of Bezos-wealth, but of ordinary middle income persons. How is it equitable that someone who drifts from job to job, is chronically tardy, does nothing to advance, spends money on booze and casinos should still be entitled to live in a nice leafy neighborhood? Shouldn't that be something earned?
I'd never heard of "shade inequality," but you put your finger on one of the stupidest truisms of our stupid era:
NPR (and almost every democrat-coded major paper, magazine, news network or blog) will fall all over themselves pointing at a ridiculous inequality without ever finishing the math equation they created to see that the story is really about class.
People with more shade at their houses are happier? Of course, they're upper middle class people with comfortable, secure incomes. People who drink 3 glasses of red wine a day are healthier? Yes, because they're in a position to afford to do that. People who don't eat (and overeat) processed foods are thinner? Yes, they have the time and money to afford a better diet.
This has been happening for years. The rich and privileged in media point at petty inequalities without ever admitting it's ultimately a class issue, and especially without discussing any possible solutions. It's almost with religious fervor now, when they write "Is your yard perpetuating white supremacy?," as if these very words will solve anything; especially when they know good and well that they're not fucking giving up their wonderfully-appointed and lushly-gardened, shaded home in a gated community.
"Is Malcom X" racist yields 'splainer after 'splainer article about how he was misunderstood and definitely NOT racist... despite being a segregationist.
I tried "are black people racist" and top result is Forbes article listing ways white people are racist without realizing it.
So then I felt like I was at the logical end of this so I tried inverting the idea in on itself to more and more degrees. "Is Hitler Antiracist," well Amazon used to stock a book from 1999 called "Adolf Hitler: Anti-racist!" I'm not certain if the term had the same meaning or context back then.
Then I tried "Intersectional Sectional Sofas" which was a miss. I was really hoping for an avant-garde design by an absolutely shitty artist, like one of those sofas that have vulvic folds or something in the seatback but in rainbow colors.
Believe it or not "Intersectional Blackface" had some fun results! Did I say "fun?" I meant "early signs of dementia."
I did attempt "antiracist blackface" hoping that Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" would come up but I was disappointed.
So I circled back to your original idea and googled "Are jigsaws racist?" Answer: The puzzles sometimes but the tools ALWAYS.
Going off oppressive tools like jigsaws, I googled "is architecture racist?" Extremely, and I can't wait to lube up and read more of "Architecture and Racism: A Conversation"
So coming to the end of my time to fritter away on googling Thinkpieces written by morons, I ponder as I often do how much energy is wasted on this shit while there're real crises being ignored. So it was "is the apocalypse racist?" Unfortunately not great results which I attribute to the fact that since these writers aren't thoughtful they can't even imagine plausible consequences of their choices.
So I tipped it back a bit and of course "is environmentalism racist" bloomed with many wonderful results of J-school scrubs trying to make their names convincing us all to focus on the irrelevant as we all go extinct.
I did a search for whether sharks are racist but I didn't find anything of note. When you consider that one shark is known as the Great White Shark, it seems like a missed opportunity.
Jaws was the greatest ever KKK recruitment ad ever filmed. Great White Shark indeed! Surprised it's not been cancelled yet. Spielberg is obviously a white supremacist. Except he's Jewish, and there is debate as to whether Jewish people are white or not.
I envision Jaws swimming around with a soggy yet still pointy white hood on his head. He needs a chinstrap to keep it on, which makes him look even duncier.
I love the original Dawn of the Dead by George A Romero. In it, the zombie apocalypse has happened, and a rational scientist is sitting on-camera in a television station pontificating about the whole depressing, abortive fiasco: "Maybe it's the brains that are already dead, and it's the idiots that are still alive." Yep. Or, even more pertinently:
I did want to comment about "Architecture and Racism: A Conversation", though. There is nothing that less resembles what a sane person would consider "conversation" than the conversations these 'alternatively cognitive' people (alt-tards?) are talking about when they say "Well, I started a much-needed conversation <when I sent those death threats> <when I caused that guy to off himself> <when I said I hated white children> etc."
They use it in the hope their words will be considered something other than the vile spew of a self-indulgent narcissist.
Note one thing: most of this stuff happens...online. Online is where the section of the world population who are the most mentally ill, insecure and isolationist have sequestered themselves 24/7 365. They represent nobody but themselves and their wee echo chamber hotel fire mirror image 'pals.' They scream and screech for attention from their shit hermit abodes because that is their way of gaining attention from others. The more psychotic and absurd they are, the more attention they get from other nutcases, even if that ends in jail time. The maddest idiots in the world now are helping to dictate world political policy. It's hilarious, really, a revenge fantasy of the impotent and ineffectual come true. Twitter Loonies Uber Alles!
Actually, we've noticed how much sway loonies on social media hold over corporations, and can force them to make Stockholm Syndrome-like about-faces if the mentally ill wankers online don't like their policies or business operations. How much of this intersectionalist shite is just an unnatural extension of this, kowtowing to nutters who want to rape and beat women with pink baseball bats for being born women, or sneering bleating racists of whatever (colour) stripe...to keep them 'happy' (not that such a thing is ever possible) and thus stirring up shit for corporations and dragging their sales down? It's all about money, start to finish, dick to dorsal. Morality has fuck all to do with it.
Let's face it, corporate and 'elite' (use the word advisedly) types are the new arbiters of 'morality,' like the unknown, food-providing gods were to people in centuries gone past, myth shrunk to human-skinsize. Obey their rules or get smashed down, or 'cancelled,' your life destroyed. They hand their behaviour diktats 'down' from 'on high' in their mainstream media outlets. There is a great deal of ego here, on both sides, and any fucking halfwit who does not like their loser life can bring a corporation to a grinding halt simply by marshalling a load of their weak, ineffectual, mentally and emotionally disturbed pals online to sign some shitty petition or make some viral video. All corporations care about is money, and all nutters care about is attention and validation of their madness.
Corporations are now obsessing over showing how committed to gay and trans and ethnic minority rights because these sectors of the populace are the ones who are loudest and can cause them the most profit-disturbing hassle and harm. So we have corporations who don't care about the population (and if their intersectionalist shit is anything to go by, hate themselves for being white) being financially manipulated by the weakest and weirdest fucking sections of the public.
They're cheered on by a bored and cowed burned-out general public, half in love with easeful death to get away from all this depressing and demoralising shit, symbiotic existential paralysis, who are too busy trying to keep their heads above poisoned ideological water in an ever-more-difficult world to give a fuck about the outrageous intricacies of it all. Thus attention-and-sex-starved nutcases + cowed, easily-swayed corporations + bored public whateverism equals...modern politics. Brilliant! :)
Stop the world,I want to get fucking off...indeed.
Malcolm X actually abandoned both racism and the Nation of Islam before he was gunned down in Harlem. He was a complex and thoughtful guy who wasn’t afraid of reality.
I think my point still stands as in the realm Cancel Culture, having an opinion when you're young or that you've long since denounced or even that you've already since apologized for (or in the case of Liam Neeson, in the process of confessing and apologizing for) still means you're a piece of human garbage that should be thrown away forever without regards to any context like a balanced regard for contributions that may greatly overshadow your differences of opinion.
So therefore Malcom X is tied for 1st Place for The Worst Person in History Forever... by the standards of the people I'm referring to in the hypothetical realm where they had any sense of integrity.
btw, I showed my ex-girlfriend (painter, art appreciate) Hunter's stuff and she immediately trashed it.
Still, she resisted when I asked her Matt's question, "Do you think there would be the same lack of attention and outrage if this was Donald Trump Jr. in this situation?"
It's hard for people to finally accept that the R vs. D fights are as fake as the competitions in Professional Wrestling.
I googled "cracker+antiracist" hoping to find a defense of these terms and found a Medium article of a mentally ill woman doing a high-larious bit. Enjoy:
I actually googled Planck's constant racist. Good lord. Apparently pi is racist and sexist too, can't seem to find anything on e or ln (the natural exponent and natural logarithm).
heh. I'd argue that "white chocolate" was very low-level, harmless racist whenever it was used to describe a very dextrous white NBA player ex. Jason Williams or Mongolian Basketball Legend Matt Taibbi.
Like a kind of Zen racism thing. So if you walk round muttering "racist racist" all day, in a mantra, like Allen Ginsberg annoying hippies in the 60s by ommming morning, noon and night...you will keep your racist impulses away, and accusations of racism from coming your way. It's a thought.
A racist black person making racist comments about white people online. How unusual. Funny how it's often the middle class black people who spout this shite (successful mixed race people are even worse), seemingly feeling guilty they have succeeded in the face of a society they say throws every obstacle in the world in front of them. They get to have their white society success cake and eat it too, performing victim mentality shite online for other black people who aren't as successful.
Another excellent comment. The beginning of the 'broken people' era, where everyone's goal should be to win the Oppression Olympics. Where you can be literally erased if someone misgenders you. Where if you're black, you're automatically exempt from any sense of social responsibility. Where it's possible to be born into the wrong body. Where men can magically become women, just by putting on lipstick.
When YA publishers began using "sensitivity readers" to suss out any potential offense-giving content in their products, those applying for the jobs were desperate to claim any Intersectionality Points they could. So, before any actual, you know, *qualifications* for the job, they would put "queer, mixed-PoC, size-positive", etc. The one I found funny and which a disturbing number of them claimed, was "MIMD", which stood for "Mental Issues, Medically Diagnosed", meaning they had CERTIFICATION for their being fucked in the head. Yeah, that's who I'm wanting to hire.
I think they've moved on to "atypical cognition MD", unless they've completely dropped the concern about having a real medical diagnosis and are just SAYING they're fucked in the head and whatchoo gonna do about it? I mean, they let Robert put a ribbon in his hair and go whack off in the girls volleyball team locker room, how are they going to quibble about someone's claim to be mentally ill?
It is a real thing. Often the government controls the land on which a tree might be planted so it isn't like the locals can "help themselves."
I know how ludicrous it sounds, but it is much like Critical Race Theory, they symptom and not the cause.
But, yeah, the way NPR presents it is maddening. It is like describing the tiny mole on your cheek in great detail while ignoring the cancer destroying your body.
I live in a town on the edge of the Sonoran desert...ain't much shade here to speak of - does that mean an entire town that is about 85% Hispanic is racist?
I'm a liberal/leftist working in media in a major east coast city and I've found NPR to a smug fuckfest for years, almost solely piloted by the self-righteous NIMBYs (and YIMBYs!) you don't want to be trapped at a dinner party with (and I unfortunately have been). I've often longed for some actual thoughtful, earthy, working-class people involved in these kinds of enterprises instead of the faux-polite Ivy-league circle jerk that it's become.
But somehow Taibbi's still right fucking on here: it's become much, much, MUCH worse!
Back in the dawn of online dating, then living in Washington, I went out with one of the names everyone familiar with NPR would recognize in its list of staff at the end. Like you, I was pretty leftist, but even back then the cult of DC centrism had worked my dating partner so thoroughly that I thought I was in a round table with George Stephenopolus / Judy Woodruff -- desperate to prove establishment credentials.
Long before they were on the radio, I used to get my car fixed at their garage in Cambridge. They had a special drawer in which they kept bumper stickers which they'd affix to the occasional late-model BMW (they'd have one of their younger employees do it on the sly); they read: "Steal From Me."
Got twenty rusty but sound gassers in a pole barn (rural Michigan) Tig welders, lifts, the whole nine yards..Most of my guys had Covid...but don't vaccinate...were in the service ... hunt and have guns.. .they don't care about identity politics....But"Car Talk"???? Dang, we'd bust out the coolers and laugh our a$$es off....miss it like a pain...the Blue Grass Sundays is still pretty fine! It's local...
NPR exists to reinforce narratives and to establish comfortable identities within an ideological framework. It assures its listeners that they will not be alone if they crawl into the witty, velvety cocoon that it weaves.
It is very good at what it does, which is unrelated to fostering a curious and informed public.
Very true. Their game shows were an example of the witty velvety cocoon. But I stopped listening to NPR several years ago because I just couldn't stand the propaganda.
Yup. Remember when we called that "the party line?" Or, a newer term, the "Overton window." Basically group think, mutual back patting version of the party line.
There was a Blocked & Reported episode that discussed the NPR show Code Switch piling on a Palestinian-American businessman who they had determined was guilty of racism. He was guilty of nothing other than having a daughter who'd posted some racist/stupid stuff in her teens, but the way they treated it you'd have thought he'd been a secret Grand Wizard. It was incredibly fucked up to listen to, and really showed the intellectual rot that NPR has suffered over time.
I would be interested in fearless or open/honest conversations about race if I ever once heard one. Seems like 90% of the time "fearless" means "in lockstep with the current ethnic studies orthodoxy", and everyone talking is totally unwilling to stray one step out of line or admit any single piece of information or data which pushes against the prevailing oppressions Olympics framing of the world.
There's a Mike Wallace interview with Morgan Freeman on the internet about race. It's self-explanatory and worth searching if you haven't seen it. Spoiler alert: Mr. Freeman is correct.
Holy shit. Because of this piece, I have wasted the whole morning reading the most benign drivel in history. NPR is a glorified gossip column. What is it that these people want? White actors are only allowed to play the villain? White tick tockers are only allowed to perform dances created by other white people? White playwrights are no longer allowed to write fucking plays?!?!?! SHUT THE FUCK UP NPR!!!!!
There is no comparison between Media Matters, Salon, Slate, CNN, the Daily Beast, et al and right-wing outlets like National Review, Daily Wire, Fox News, et al. The sheer deranged lunacy of the left-wing sites has no parallel.
Just about everybody has. It's a commenter's desert out there. Not that the comments were ever worthwhile, present company excepted, but one can sometimes get a feel for how much BS was in the story one just read by checking the comments.
Any comment section that isn't behind a paywall and isn't heavily moderated will be dominated by bots and contain so much noise as to be useless. And non-social media companies don't have those kind of resources.
I nearly fell off my chair laughing at this. For humor value alone it is a worthy contribution to public discourse. "Pinned to the wrestling mat beyond the three-count"? Ha ha! There is truth in Matt's humor that somehow defuses the despair that I otherwise often feel about the censorship and narrative warfare he is describing.
This article brilliantly describes why my wife, who is an otherwise intelligent individual, has morphed into a woke social justice warrior in recent months. Years ago she internalized the canard that NPR is "unbiased" and does "great journalism". So basically she believes everything they tell her with the fervent ardor of a newly converted disciple. The fact that my tax dollars partially fund this media monstrosity is only the icing on this bad-tasting cake. I hope I live long enough to see these grifters defunded completely.
I feel your pain. Family and friends are so brainwashed into the Wokie mindset that I can't have normal conversations with them. Knee-jerk reactions to words (did you know that's actually racist?) etc. So I cut them all out of my life until they regain sanity if they ever do (which I doubt).
The idea that families comprise only the people with whom one shares blood is a propaganda myth. In the natural order of things, any nurturing group is a family. If nothing else, maybe the falling out over this kind of issue will get us back to the natural order of things where all that matters is the nurturing.
In my personal experience 9 times out of 10 when things get real bad it's family that steps in not friends. I'm talking real problems like death of a spouse, serious illness such as cancer, or a job loss forcing someone out of their home. This holds even when significant dysfunction is present in the family structure.
And bless you for having the kind of family that does. However, far too many people don't, and that's why the conditioning we've been subject to for most of a century that family is where you go because they have to take you in is so disastrous. People who lack the kind you have are left with nothing because they literally don't know how to form bonds outside that narrow definition. In the US, it's either "family" or "suck-it-up rugged individualism".
Is it any wonder there's a pandemic of mental health issues in this country, as the pharmaceutical industry makes money hand-over-fist peddling psychotropic drugs that don't really cure anything because you can't make money curing people?
I'm curious where you get the idea that "family" has been promoted when it's been attacked, belittled and derided in all media for decades. Matter of fact, for the last 30 years or so, the idea that your "real" family is whoever accepts (and nurtures, I guess) you, not blood relatives.
Of course, this shit coming from the American entertainment/information industry has been thoroughly poisoned so that "nurturing" becomes "lets you be whatever shit kind of person you want".
I'm sure we've had different experiences of "family" but I can't follow your claim that blood family has been "promoted".
Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle defined the family/friends you find on your own or that you know you belong with (could include some actual family, but mostly not) was your “karass”. The family you were born into was usually a fake karass, or a “grandfallon.” Substack has been great for bringing various karasses together and also for pointing out the grandfallons.
Our state media, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is vicious and punitive with their woke culture: employees tow the line or they are purged. One of their dogmas is anti-Americanism, every broadcast takes a shot at you Americans, a sneaky little stab in the back, employees dare not praise America that is a career limiting faux pas.
I have said this before, but Minnesota Public Radio (and NPR), which I loved for 20 years, has become exactly this type of partisan viewpoint driven media for nearly a decade and gets worse each year.
There is often zero presentation of values (values which I often personally disagree with) which large swathes of the country hold. Long pieces on immigration policy, where not just the interviewees, but the NPR "journalists" assume that the only criteria considered for whether someone should be accepted (and if at all possible rapidly naturalized) into the US is "will they be better off than where they were living before?".
The very concept that any other consideration should be on the table, or that the law itself should be followed is at best totally ignored. When not ignored, such values/thoughts are treated as ipso facto evidence of extreme racism and white supremacy. It is a ridiculous joke of a presentation, absolutely just as biased as Ben Shapiro, and has driven many left-centrists like myself to treat it with the same disdain we do Fox News.
When the riots were very serious in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, and random cars of people were showing up at liquor stores and pharmacies with guns at 4pm on a weekday with police response measured in hours, you could turn on Minnesota Public Radio, and the entire discussion was on the main "peaceful march" surrounded by journalists and hundreds of police. That and regular programming like "Texas Poetry Hour".
Large swathes of time where you would have had zero idea listening to what had been a great local news station, where 90% of the staff is based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, that anything was amiss from a public safety standpoint. It was a complete betrayal of its mission in the service of a political project, one which would have made Pravda proud.
What do we get instead of news? Instead what we get is daily racism update. Housing prices up? Article about how this is all about racism and differentially impacts minorities. Housing prices down? Article about how this is all about racism and differentially impacts minorities. Does either article provide much in the way of actual research or figures to back up this position? No. Weather unseasonably hot? Racism! Weather unseasonably cold Racism!
This sounds like a joke but it is not. Typically they latch on to some single datapoint, might even be a datapoint that this is 8.94% bad for white people and 9.02% bad for black people. They also often don't even consider if some other piece of data or way of framing the problem would show an actual benefit for minorities. That isn't part of the mission, ideology is their mission.
Conveying reality isn't the mission anymore...it is sad, at times I almost get emotional about it.
I recall the day I stopped listening to NPR. It was after the Islamist extremist attack in San Bernardino in 2015. As the piece began, I wondered, how soon before "BUT THE REAL VICTIMS ARE OF COURSE PEACEFUL MUSLIMS WHO WILL SUFFER THE BACKLASH FROM BIGOTED RACIST WHITE PEOPLE!". And sure enough, about 30 seconds in...
Whatever you do, don't click through to the link in the NPR article that provides support for their statement that conservatives "falsely portrayed the protests as riots. It's head-exploding propaganda by a former newswire.
This is exactly the kind of article that somehow doesn't sink in to a lot of already-polarized brains. Not being able to see one's own actions reflected in what a member of "the other tribe" is doing is one of the single worst causes of the division in America right now.
I get very depressed regarding a close friend who is a bright well educated guy, his wife too, academics. But they just cannot get out of the left wing thought bubble/echo chamber. At times you can see in them see the slight glimmer of awareness, but then they always stamp it out after another couple days of obsessively reading NYT/Facebook/Twitter/whatever.
Tucker Carlson, instead of being someone who is peddling 20% actively harmful nonsense, 30% bullshit, 30% run of the mill conservativism, and 20% reasonable critique of the prevailing ideological status quo, just becomes a crazy Nazi who views cannot even be considered. Why? Well the actively harmful nonsense of course. If you point out the left's actively harmful nonsense, well out come the parade of 8 million excuses, and why you should just ignore those parts or the presentation.
If you try to constrict discussion to just a single point and say "what about this?", well you better make sure the you find some messenger who is air tight politically. The world is divided up into "them" and "us". And no one associated with "them" gets their opinion considered. And these are thoughtful, reasonable critically minded people. I fear for what their less critically minded colleagues are like.
Many young people are stuck there too, even when they obviously aren't. I have discussions with my kids' friends (ranging 20-30 yrs old) and if you go through a list of specific positions, they would be more than slightly right of center. You hit two or three hot-button issues and they'll forget about everything else - they cannot see any nuance or grey area in a few topics and will only focus on those topics as all important..
But your description of them belies the claim, "And these are thoughtful, reasonable critically minded people." Perhaps you should reconsider that view of your close friend and his wife.
I listened to "All Things Considered" for many years and gradually it changed to "Only Things We Like Considered" and it is no longer interesting.
"All Things Distorted(tm)"
Oh, did you mean "Small Things Considered?" Srsly, I could no longer stand that pretentious, snooty, disdainful claptrap all the way back in the 1990s. Harry Shearer did a good sendup of Robert whatzizname---Siegel, the longtime host, on his "CPR---Continental Public Radio" on his 'Le Show.'
Now, please Gods, make Marco Worm-Man Werman of "The World" go away too.
“Claptrap”..bingo!
[eats canned dog food in post-apocalyptic wasteland]
https://youtu.be/J7lMlz3DX_Q
It is a little-known fact that George Miller was a practicing surgeon before he became a film director and was inspired to create the MAD MAX series by the gruesome messes he had to clean up after Australian road accidents. He is also one of those Greek Australians you don't know too much about if you're not Australian, but are the reason why you can get really good Greek food in Australia.
Me, too. It really was a loss, but I felt their audience was very calibrated and I was no longer in their calculation.
I used to enjoy Story Corps (Core?) until it made me cringe along with the rest of the show. I used to listen to NPR daily until I couldn't overlook the bias any longer.
Yes, Matt, you hit this one right out of the park. I stopped listening to public radio several years ago when I could take no more. NPR is the very worst virtue signaler of wokedom on the planet. At least with the NY Times, I can skip over the columnists that make my flesh crawl: Michelle Goldberg, Ezra Klein, Spenser Bokat Lindel, Jennifer Boylan, Kara Swisher, Roxanne Gay, the entire Editorial Board, and others. But with public radio, as soon as I turn it on, I'm subjected to every hectoring, double hyphenated do-gooder on their roster. My only escape is not to turn it on in the first place.
"I'm subjected to every hectoring, double-hyphenated, do-gooder on their roster." A great comment that could've been written by Matt, himself. Bravo!
You're too kind!
NPR used to be one of my prime news sources, but it's become so ridiculous it seems like an SNL skit. After some recent local election here in LA, they described the winner as "only the fifth woman of color to hold the post". I couldn't stop laughing.
Lol. That is priceless.
Another tough (and false) one that was way over the line was a local Minnesota Public Radio piece where the reporter slipped into the claims of the protesters, and instead of reporting them repeated them. "Here in a city where police kill so many black men each day" or some similar phrasing to intro a discussion.
This is a city (Minneapolis), where police kill ~1 person a year, and roughly half the time that person is black. So "one every other year", becomes "so many each day". Even if you extend it to the whole metro, the numbers don't get close to even 1/month and are even less proportionally black.
And this is during the protests. No wonder people believe all sorts of non-factual shit.
You would think that only black people are shot and killed by police. To the count of roughly 1,000 a year. Also, to listen to most media is a constant confusion of measures, raw numbers, various percentages of something such as population, numeric comparisons in numbers and rates between groups are all thrown out without labeling what the number stands for.
The old "what bleeds leads" has morphed into "what's black (or other grouping of the SJW moment) and bleeds leads." And once the lead is given, nothing else is given.
So, what about all the white deaths by gun by police?
Oh, none, you say?
News covers events as they show up, not percentages by population part, except ....
First, the category of deaths:
1 - by police
2 - by method - in this example, by shooting
Second, the raw numbers by category + multiples and rates:
(Note, the numbers are very close for 2017,2018, 2019 and 2020 - the last I looked up June 4th of last year and haven't updated it.)
You will note that just about 2 white people were shot and killed by police for every black person, except for 2019 when it was 1.57 times)
Also note that statistical data is not always recorded by police (surprise /s) so we also have "Other" and "Unknown" categories.
~~https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-death-by-us-police-by-race/
2017: (987 total)
White: 457 (2.04 times black deaths in raw numbers or 987/457=2.15 times less than (or 46% of) population representation. 2.55 times "Hispanic" category)
Black: 223 (adjusted per capita * 5.74 = 1281 or almost 3 times more (2.8) than whites, proportional would be 39 or 223/39=5.7 times population representation)
Hispanic: 179 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 795 or 1.7 times more, proportional would be 40)
Other: 44
Unknown: 84
2018: (996 total)
White: 399 (1.91 times black deaths in raw numbers or 996/399=2.49 times less than (or 40% of) population representation. and 2.7 times Hispanic)
Black: 209 (adjusted per capita * 5.74 = 1201 or 3 times more than whites, proportional would be 36 or 209/36=5.8 times population representation)
Hispanic: 148 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 657 or 1.6 times more, proportional would be 33)
Other: 36
Unknown: 204
2019: (1,004 total)
White: 370 (1.57 times black deaths in raw numbers or 1004/370=2.7 times less than (or 37% of) population representation and 2.34 times Hispanic)
Black: 235 (adjusted * 5.74 = 1350 or 3.6 times more than whites, proportional would be 41 or 235/41=5.7 times population representation)
Hispanic: 158 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 702 or 1.9 times more, proportional would be 36)
Other: 39
Unknown: 202
2020 - (429 so far as of June 4th):
White: 172 (1.95 times black deaths in raw numbers or 429/172=2.49 times less than (or 40% of) population representation and 3 times Hispanic)
Black: 88 (adjusted * 5.74 = 506 or 2.9 times more than whites, proportional would be 15 or 88/15=5.9 times population representation)
Hispanic: 57 (adjusted per capita * 4.44 = 253 or 1.5 times more, proportional would be 13)
Other: 14
Unknown: 98
In other words, most media are actively (determinedly) providing a very unbalanced
story, not including all interested parties.
Racist! (had to.)
Thank you for speaking up. But you forgot to use Racisx so you're a sexist bigot.
Of course, you mean a "Sexisx" bigot.
I also should have used PEBT. "Person Experiencing Bigoted Thoughts"
I want to apologize and admit I made a mistake and I'm going to Do The Work to become a better person by annoying every minority I personally know for the next two months by constantly bringing up the mistake.
Ha. Meant to also note that as much as racism is front, center and huge, "racism" as such is not causitive. Otherwise we are left with no way to explain similar police versus public behavior where differences in race are not there (such as all black or all white or all something else). In that sense, using "racism" is more distraction than explanation, more a targeting vector, than a real reason which may be why it is such a wack-a-mole effort to go after. We are after a resulting symptom, which is so large it obscures causes.
And, (really, pun not intended) more than black people have "skin in the game" as the saying goes. Concentrating on racism as a cause gives greater anxiety for one set of people thinking it is just them and diminished recognition for another set of people thinking it is actually someone else's problem.
I have a Canadian friend who believes it is a scandal that the US has not yet elected a woman president. I speculated that could change if Caitlyn Jenner ran for president and won. Radio silence.
Eh? Canada didn't even elect its only female Prime Minister - she took over from Brian Mulroney when he resigned - and she was roundly defeated when she actually tried.
President Harris preview.
God, I hope not! As a former Californian I can attest that she would be an awful president. Every office she led was full of disfunction!
She wouldn't do anything, like Joe doesn't.
She'd just have to show up on time and cackle nervously while searching for her place on the cue card.
I tell all of my Canadian friends that it must feel awfully comfortable in a mostly white country with less than a quarter of the US population and SUCK IT.
They've got a lot of space. Space is good. Distant neighbors make good neighbors.
What do you mean? We elected Trudeau, our brave and beautiful woman president!
Which is freaking choice with Justin Hairdeau having appointed the granddaughter of one of WW II's top Ukrainian Nazis as Deputy PM.
Chrystia Freeland's "Papa" was Michael Chomiak, one of the Nazis hustled by the OSS, etc to Canada along with so many other Nazi criminals in the post-WW II "Get out of Your Firing Squad Free" card times. Little Chrystia worked for his newspaper in Alberta growing up, promoting typical Nazi stuff. Alberta, the land of Ukrainian Nazi statuary, even in downtown Calgary, ffs! And now lil' Ms Freeland is poised for real power with her Russia-hating firmly a part of her makeup. OBTW, she's married to a fellow Russia-hating NYT reporter. How sweet it is....!
How many generations removed from the nazis must one be to serve in your opinion?
Removed? She wasn't removed. She grew up working with him on his paper in Alberta. This little apple fell from the same tree. What's funny is her own mother was antithetical to her father in her personal politics.
I know nothing about her and have never heard of her, but mentioning her grandfather struck me as odd. If she's that bad there surely must be some appalling articles she penned while working at that paper. Did she write about a final solution for some problem that has been buggind her? Maybe there's something she said? Perhaps a few sieg-heils while marching down main street? The worst you can say about her is who her grandfather was?
No, not at all. There is plenty about her to say. A neocon in Liberal clothing. One of the worst. She only got her position/career-climb at the expense of U.S.-Russian relations. She was chosen for her 'attributes' of Russophobia.
And it's a very Canadian thing to blame that on the voters in a totally sham electoral democracy.
Here's one from CNN:
CNN - Portland burning in the background.
"This is the way America was started", “ This is not something that has not ever happened before, this is so terrible and where are we, and these savages and all of that. That's how this country was started”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nTyCiZFztw
State-sanctioned color revolution.
I have offered up the usage "She is the first woman of color to be the fifth woman of color to hold the position!!"
I'm fortunate enough that the news-only local NPR station in my area runs the BBC World Service all day long weekdays except when Morning Edition and All Things Considered air, so I can just get actual news most of the day. (Okay, the Beeb has its problems with wokeness, too, but they don't seem to have gotten into most of what the World Service puts out.) They run it a lot of the time on weekends, too, but then it's mostly football (in the British sense).
"One of these professional analysts has to figure this one out eventually, right?"
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
J Silverman nailed it - You gotta serve somebody - Bob Dylan. MSM demands fealty, your paycheque depends on it.
How much do you think NYT senior people like (her smugness) Michelle Goldberg earn per year? $300,000?
And how many willing lemmings are waiting in the wings, should one of the established mouthpieces have a change of heart? Would it affect the overall trajectory? Of course not. It's easy to justify why you should stay on and earn the money and go to the parties. You just have to say what the "leaders" want, it's easy!
I bet that would be a dozen people willing to do it for free. Do you think they make $300,000 per year?
Not sure about NYT but The Atlantic somehow needs 50 million per year to break even. I have no idea why they are burning through so much money.
> “The Atlantic needs to make $50 million in annual subscription revenue in order to break even, according to Thompson. Hitting that target has become more complicated since Trump left the White House and the pandemic let up. New subscribers are coming in at about a quarter of the rate they did last year (10,000 a month, on average), and the magazine faces challenges keeping some of its existing audience, which may have less of a need for The Atlantic’s journalism in a post-Trump, post-Covid world. Without Trump or the pandemic, the path to $50 million is significantly harder. Since February, the magazine has brought in about 10,000 subscribers a month — roughly analogous to its growth rate before the pandemic. Meanwhile, its retention rate for existing subscribers is about 75 to 80 percent, Thompson said. The net result, according to Thompson’s presentation, is not growth. It’s a static or slightly declining ..."
Even if the salary itself isn't $300,000, the level of access and book deals/endorsements certainly makes it WORTH that much, at least.
That makes sense - ancillaries - maybe her salary is only 200 but her earning power could be 5,6,700 k$
Anyone else have a opinion on the earning power of humans employed in MSM?
Together, Joe Scarboro and Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC's Morning Joe earned an unbelievable $16 million in 2018. Their combined net worth back then was just under $50 million.
I think the NYT said somewhere that they start columnists at around $100K, +/-. Dunno how how that works out in terms of columns /week. Some are twice a week, some are weekly, some every 2 weeks or less.
Good lord, she's awful. And apparently unacquainted with basic research methodology. She really seems to take one bit of info and extrapolate from that out of her ass. And gets it so wrong.
Is she more trite or smug?
More trite than smug, but i'll find a better word. Gail Collins in the smug one. And Charles Blow, and Kristof.
Ross Douthat is fantastic
Blow is stupid. I like kristof he is simple practical feet on the ground reporting of mundane daily life trials and tribulations- i greatly respect that
He's apparently mulling running for Governor of Oregon. I'm with Jack Shafer here (who's gotten in some nice digs in other columns too)-
"Will he connect with Oregon voters on the stump, or will he repel them by acting like he’s on a book tour raining his standard sanctimony on the masses? "
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/07/20/nick-kristof-oregon-governor-journalists-politicians-500202
Michelle Goldberg? Just seeing her Three Stooges haircut makes me cringe.
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.EtpKxZ5YbJfLsonQAL5UdQHaD5%26pid%3DApi&f=1
Steve (gag) Inskeep must make over $400k by now. He was at $350k/yr ten years ago
Wow the morning show guy for NPR makes that kind of money! That’s serious cabbage - 400k
"Non-Profit" Dr. evil making air quotes
It’s easy not to make a profit when you’re paying the guy that much money to read the news.
Ask Tony Fauci abouddit...
Scott come give me a hug
~Upton Sinclair
Up here in Canada, the same phenomenon has been happening with our NPR equivalent CBC Radio. A decade ago, i was a huge proponent for CBC and used to listen regularly by air and podcast - i even wrote my MP and asked them to advocate for increasing their funding and adding a new local station in our area.
But - and here's something you've never heard before anywhere else - several years ago something changed. They kinda snapped. They stopped being thoughtful omnivorous examiners of culture, and made a hard left turn into the ditch of nonstop white-knuckled cultural enforcers. It's their duty, you see, to tell you how you should be thinking and acting, self-righteous fucking Daniel Tiger for grownup-ass shit. Now every time i start my car and catch the 10 seconds before my bluetooth kicks in, they're talking about one of three things: race, trans, or covid. (And often they are mashing them all together into one Voltron of whinging). There is *nothing else*. The repetition is maddening - literal preachers are less preachy than this! Unless you've got the Memento disease, it's totally unlistenable. Kinda sad.
"Voltron of whinging." Literally hurt myself laughing at this. Watch out Taibbi, you've got some fierce competition.
I also laughed out loud.
All over the western world, former liberals have become the moral majority. It is actually quite funny, especially if you don't have kids and you aren't in athletics, entertainment, media or education. If you are in any of these, it probably isn't funny.
Am in education. It's horrible.
Brilliant comment! You nailed it with the ONLY three topics in the world that we should obsess over all day every day, Covid, Trans, Race (not necessarily in that order). Almost as if they are trying to program people with the repetition...
You would think that trans folks would eventually get tired of this shit as well. I am waiting for some trans folks to start calling this shit out. We will see if it ever happens. If it is all about power, they never will.
Some definitely have. Jenn Smith in Canada and Miranda Yardley both come to mind. But there definitely need to be more. Because in the long run, this agenda actually harms transgenders.
You'd think, as "regular people" (purportedly), they'd reject the thesis that their "right" (of 00.003% of the population) to "feel better" by going into the less-practical (for them) bathroom facilities trumps the feelings of the 99.97% of women who do not have beards or testicles and do not want such people, however they identify, into their "gender safe spaces".
Doesn't this seem irrational to anyone else?? As just a practical matter?? Common sense? As a matter of "kindness and respect for all", shouldn't the few male-presenting "women" take one for the team and do the right thing instead of forcing THEIR rights over what everyone else wants?
Or are they saying that prior to 2014 no trans people ever went to the bathroom? I suspect we are seeing the rigid adherence to dogma of a couple of hundred "super trans" academics being presented as the actual preference of a whole "oppressed community", when it is not. I know when I worked with M2F trans folks, they handled it by going to the bathroom that had stand-up urinals. They may have felt weird about it, but I'm pretty sure they did it that way out of respect for the wishes of the women at that workplace. Somehow, that consideration is not part of the dogma that must be rigidly followed by the trans activists of today.
it isn't about doing what is right. that went out the window long ago. It is about forcing an ideology on everyone. Like rubbing shit in your face. It is about power. When trans folks themselves start calling this shit out, then we are on the path to fixing this hole mess.
Exactly
Debbie Hayton is a transgender activist. Called it out here:
https://unherd.com/2021/07/how-the-trans-activists-fooled-ireland/
Very good article. Thank you for this!
She's awesome.
When I arrived in Canada 31 years ago. The CBC radio was my daily companion where I learnt about all things Canadian and good news reporting from around the world, Then some years later it turned into a smug provider of politically correct opinions, the foreign corespondents were gone. I stopped listening and now begrudge every dime of my taxes that pay for it.
"And often they are mashing them all together into one Voltron of whinging"
This is a fantastic and hilarious way to put it.
"Literal preachers are less preachy than this!"
That's great!
Sad is right. Its to a point where I support defunding to try to clean the CBC of this madness
Covid, Race, Trans = CRT!
Nice!
The 10 seconds before Bluetooth! My exact experience with WNYC.
When you said "Voltron of Whinging" my man...Voltron was badass back in the day!! lol
The $600 million Trudeau gave them might have something to do with it.
I am anti-Democrat and anti-anti-racist for the most part, but I still see a Republican Party firmly in the grasp of a racist Trump cult. A pox on both their houses.
Well how would that give them the numbers they wanted?? Do you even 'woke', bro?
I used to listen to NPR religiously in the 80s when I worked the graveyard shift at a local hospital. I loved their nightly segment featuring Afro-pop. Then in the 90s, they dumped the music and re-branded as Victim Radio. No purported identity group is too small or ephemeral not to warrant a one hour sentimental 'centering' of its deep pain and psychic woundedness; no alleged injustice so slight or self-imposed that it can't be called a systematic human rights catastrophe; no broken finger-nail so trivial that it can't be seen as traumatic deserving of a lifetime of taxpayer supported therapy. The world of NPR is filled with hapless victims of a faceless soul-crushing global system whose daily struggle against the horror and indignity of its marginalization is the subject of hours on hours on hours of somnolent chronicling by self-indulgent bourgeoise puritans. What would we do without NPR? I mean what other broadcaster would have blown the lid off the great national scandal of neighborhood shade inequality?
I thought you were kidding with "neighborhood shade inequality" so I Googled it to be sure. Poe's law!
I too Googled it. Found an article in (where else) The Guardian entitled "How America’s treeless streets are fueling inequality". I shit you not. Ya want shade? Plant a fuckin' tree, moron.
«The Guardian entitled "How America’s treeless streets are fueling inequality". I shit you not. Ya want shade? Plant a fuckin' tree, moron.»
The title is cretinous, but it is a distortion of a very real issue: there are studies that show that the more a suburb has got trees, the higher the real estate values, and the suburbs with no trees (and house gardens) have the lowest real estate values. The reason is really simple: trees take space that could be be use for denser and thus cheaper houses. Trees increase profits only if the prospective buyers are affluent enough to pay a premium for living in a nice areas.
Doh. Plant a fucking tree, moron.
Oh, you don't own the property? Then move you fucking moron. And plant a tree there.
Who lives in those high end buildings? Not POCs or queers or trans or whatever your bitch is.
Loved by many; feared by some.
The relationship may only be coincidental. Developers will typically scalp a lot prior to installation of a new foundation, then over-plant afterword in order create landscape density. In five years, homeowners will have to remove many of the trees bec of crowding. The property value is related to the improvement. The trees do not add value, but rather enhance the property's aesthetic appeal to promote sales just like how real estate agents put fake furniture in an empty house.
High density residential developments (apts., condos, townhomes) will naturally have fewer trees because they don't have private lawns. Zero lot line townhomes at best may have room for a single small ornamental. In Dallas, the most expensive properties in the city are the downtown and adjacent high rise condos as a trip to realtor.com will show. Few homes in the vast swath of treed burbs in the DFW Metro come close. But when you average together the value of those properties with apartments and more modest townhomes, those values are quite a bit lower. When you parse out the high end condos, what you find is that zero trees are correlated with the most expensive residential properties.
Not to belabor the point, but if you are looking for "inequity" you will always find it because "equity" is relative. it just depends on perspective. Middle class people and bourgeois wannabes in the post war period made no secret of their desire to progressively trade up to nicer neighborhoods. Today people seem a little embarrassed to admit that, but that desire is still a powerful motivation. I show up on time to work, try to do my best so I can advance, spend my money wisely and avoid debt so I can move to a leafy neighborhood with a better class of people. I'm not talking here of Bezos-wealth, but of ordinary middle income persons. How is it equitable that someone who drifts from job to job, is chronically tardy, does nothing to advance, spends money on booze and casinos should still be entitled to live in a nice leafy neighborhood? Shouldn't that be something earned?
I'd never heard of "shade inequality," but you put your finger on one of the stupidest truisms of our stupid era:
NPR (and almost every democrat-coded major paper, magazine, news network or blog) will fall all over themselves pointing at a ridiculous inequality without ever finishing the math equation they created to see that the story is really about class.
People with more shade at their houses are happier? Of course, they're upper middle class people with comfortable, secure incomes. People who drink 3 glasses of red wine a day are healthier? Yes, because they're in a position to afford to do that. People who don't eat (and overeat) processed foods are thinner? Yes, they have the time and money to afford a better diet.
This has been happening for years. The rich and privileged in media point at petty inequalities without ever admitting it's ultimately a class issue, and especially without discussing any possible solutions. It's almost with religious fervor now, when they write "Is your yard perpetuating white supremacy?," as if these very words will solve anything; especially when they know good and well that they're not fucking giving up their wonderfully-appointed and lushly-gardened, shaded home in a gated community.
Here's some outstanding reporting by TheGuardian (same author too, one month apart):
> Why Ivanka Trump’s new haircut should make us very afraid
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/18/why-ivanka-trumps-new-haircut-should-make-us-very-afraid
> The uproar over AOC's hair is a reminder that women can't win under the patriarchy
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/oct/12/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-haircut-uproar-aoc-reminder-women-cant-win-under-the-patriarchy
I refuse to click on either of these links but I like your comment regardless.
Many years ago, serious musicians spoke disparagingly among themselves of "haircut bands." Now we have haircut governance.
if only it were that simple.
Here's a fun game: google random words to see why and how they're racist.
Is corn racist? Is the moon racist? Is Planck's constant racist? Yes, yes, and yes.
Is math racist? That one's too obvious.
I tried going the other way:
"Is Malcom X" racist yields 'splainer after 'splainer article about how he was misunderstood and definitely NOT racist... despite being a segregationist.
I tried "are black people racist" and top result is Forbes article listing ways white people are racist without realizing it.
So then I felt like I was at the logical end of this so I tried inverting the idea in on itself to more and more degrees. "Is Hitler Antiracist," well Amazon used to stock a book from 1999 called "Adolf Hitler: Anti-racist!" I'm not certain if the term had the same meaning or context back then.
Then I tried "Intersectional Sectional Sofas" which was a miss. I was really hoping for an avant-garde design by an absolutely shitty artist, like one of those sofas that have vulvic folds or something in the seatback but in rainbow colors.
Believe it or not "Intersectional Blackface" had some fun results! Did I say "fun?" I meant "early signs of dementia."
I did attempt "antiracist blackface" hoping that Spike Lee's "Bamboozled" would come up but I was disappointed.
So I circled back to your original idea and googled "Are jigsaws racist?" Answer: The puzzles sometimes but the tools ALWAYS.
Going off oppressive tools like jigsaws, I googled "is architecture racist?" Extremely, and I can't wait to lube up and read more of "Architecture and Racism: A Conversation"
So coming to the end of my time to fritter away on googling Thinkpieces written by morons, I ponder as I often do how much energy is wasted on this shit while there're real crises being ignored. So it was "is the apocalypse racist?" Unfortunately not great results which I attribute to the fact that since these writers aren't thoughtful they can't even imagine plausible consequences of their choices.
So I tipped it back a bit and of course "is environmentalism racist" bloomed with many wonderful results of J-school scrubs trying to make their names convincing us all to focus on the irrelevant as we all go extinct.
I did a search for whether sharks are racist but I didn't find anything of note. When you consider that one shark is known as the Great White Shark, it seems like a missed opportunity.
Jaws was the greatest ever KKK recruitment ad ever filmed. Great White Shark indeed! Surprised it's not been cancelled yet. Spielberg is obviously a white supremacist. Except he's Jewish, and there is debate as to whether Jewish people are white or not.
Boy, the modern world is confusing.
Sharks aided the AXIS in WWII by killing US Navy men (as recalled in the monologue during Jaws) which means they were on Hitler's side.
Indeed - lol!
I envision Jaws swimming around with a soggy yet still pointy white hood on his head. He needs a chinstrap to keep it on, which makes him look even duncier.
I love the original Dawn of the Dead by George A Romero. In it, the zombie apocalypse has happened, and a rational scientist is sitting on-camera in a television station pontificating about the whole depressing, abortive fiasco: "Maybe it's the brains that are already dead, and it's the idiots that are still alive." Yep. Or, even more pertinently:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpzzo9j8MGk
Your comment wins the internets tubes today.
Cultural appropriation of mud huts? That'll get you canceled for sure.
That's some funny stuff.
I did want to comment about "Architecture and Racism: A Conversation", though. There is nothing that less resembles what a sane person would consider "conversation" than the conversations these 'alternatively cognitive' people (alt-tards?) are talking about when they say "Well, I started a much-needed conversation <when I sent those death threats> <when I caused that guy to off himself> <when I said I hated white children> etc."
They use it in the hope their words will be considered something other than the vile spew of a self-indulgent narcissist.
Note one thing: most of this stuff happens...online. Online is where the section of the world population who are the most mentally ill, insecure and isolationist have sequestered themselves 24/7 365. They represent nobody but themselves and their wee echo chamber hotel fire mirror image 'pals.' They scream and screech for attention from their shit hermit abodes because that is their way of gaining attention from others. The more psychotic and absurd they are, the more attention they get from other nutcases, even if that ends in jail time. The maddest idiots in the world now are helping to dictate world political policy. It's hilarious, really, a revenge fantasy of the impotent and ineffectual come true. Twitter Loonies Uber Alles!
I note that the COVID lockdowns had the effect of pushing many formerly sane people into this virtual insane asylum.
I joined Twitter in March 2020 out of boredom. "I'm stuck at home anyway, so why not?" I left Twitter in June 2020, appalled.
I am not the best example, since I was never sane to begin with. But at least I have an ethos.
Actually, we've noticed how much sway loonies on social media hold over corporations, and can force them to make Stockholm Syndrome-like about-faces if the mentally ill wankers online don't like their policies or business operations. How much of this intersectionalist shite is just an unnatural extension of this, kowtowing to nutters who want to rape and beat women with pink baseball bats for being born women, or sneering bleating racists of whatever (colour) stripe...to keep them 'happy' (not that such a thing is ever possible) and thus stirring up shit for corporations and dragging their sales down? It's all about money, start to finish, dick to dorsal. Morality has fuck all to do with it.
Let's face it, corporate and 'elite' (use the word advisedly) types are the new arbiters of 'morality,' like the unknown, food-providing gods were to people in centuries gone past, myth shrunk to human-skinsize. Obey their rules or get smashed down, or 'cancelled,' your life destroyed. They hand their behaviour diktats 'down' from 'on high' in their mainstream media outlets. There is a great deal of ego here, on both sides, and any fucking halfwit who does not like their loser life can bring a corporation to a grinding halt simply by marshalling a load of their weak, ineffectual, mentally and emotionally disturbed pals online to sign some shitty petition or make some viral video. All corporations care about is money, and all nutters care about is attention and validation of their madness.
Corporations are now obsessing over showing how committed to gay and trans and ethnic minority rights because these sectors of the populace are the ones who are loudest and can cause them the most profit-disturbing hassle and harm. So we have corporations who don't care about the population (and if their intersectionalist shit is anything to go by, hate themselves for being white) being financially manipulated by the weakest and weirdest fucking sections of the public.
They're cheered on by a bored and cowed burned-out general public, half in love with easeful death to get away from all this depressing and demoralising shit, symbiotic existential paralysis, who are too busy trying to keep their heads above poisoned ideological water in an ever-more-difficult world to give a fuck about the outrageous intricacies of it all. Thus attention-and-sex-starved nutcases + cowed, easily-swayed corporations + bored public whateverism equals...modern politics. Brilliant! :)
Stop the world,I want to get fucking off...indeed.
Speaking of nutters....
"I am bored to death
I don't care where the world has been
I am bored to death
And I dunno where it's headed to..."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPWI0CMwbfA
Malcolm X actually abandoned both racism and the Nation of Islam before he was gunned down in Harlem. He was a complex and thoughtful guy who wasn’t afraid of reality.
But to your broader ironies . . . Totally agree.
I think my point still stands as in the realm Cancel Culture, having an opinion when you're young or that you've long since denounced or even that you've already since apologized for (or in the case of Liam Neeson, in the process of confessing and apologizing for) still means you're a piece of human garbage that should be thrown away forever without regards to any context like a balanced regard for contributions that may greatly overshadow your differences of opinion.
So therefore Malcom X is tied for 1st Place for The Worst Person in History Forever... by the standards of the people I'm referring to in the hypothetical realm where they had any sense of integrity.
"...in the hypothetical realm where they had any sense of integrity."
Ah yes, the alternative timeline in which they are very self-aware and Schrodinger's Cat is and always will be just plain dead.
"I was really hoping for an avant-garde design by an absolutely shitty artist"
I hear Hunter B. is available. He would probably do you up a sofa for the appropriate amount of cabbage.
btw, I showed my ex-girlfriend (painter, art appreciate) Hunter's stuff and she immediately trashed it.
Still, she resisted when I asked her Matt's question, "Do you think there would be the same lack of attention and outrage if this was Donald Trump Jr. in this situation?"
It's hard for people to finally accept that the R vs. D fights are as fake as the competitions in Professional Wrestling.
I already inquired. He refuses to do it because of the rainbow color scheme.
"No Yellow," he said.
Relevant Ryan Long comedy skit: How to be a Blogger: LIFE HACK
https://youtu.be/I7VEx2dviNk
That guy's so great.
I do not subscribe to this stuff.
https://whorattledyourcage.blogspot.com/2019/03/better-living-through-death.html
I did "air" and Mother Jones to the rescue, calling it racist.
Chairs are racist: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/how-tell-if-your-empty-chair-lawn-display-racist-does-it-have-noose/321878/
As is the term 'caucasian.'
http://liberalamerica.life/2016/05/15/til-the-term-caucasian-is-racist-af-heres-why/
Should we just use "honkey" or "cracker" instead?
I've taken a liking to the Black Nationlists that just call white people "Devil" and the description "Devilish." It's very cute.
I googled "cracker+antiracist" hoping to find a defense of these terms and found a Medium article of a mentally ill woman doing a high-larious bit. Enjoy:
https://medium.com/equality-includes-you/cookin-with-crackers-fc5b13c55d35
Also it's a whole series. She got paid for this work, lol.
'Redneck' or 'white trash' are equally acceptable racist terms of abuse.
I actually googled Planck's constant racist. Good lord. Apparently pi is racist and sexist too, can't seem to find anything on e or ln (the natural exponent and natural logarithm).
What about
"We can learn from the Electromagnetic Force how to be more inclusive"
"How the term 'Imaginary Numbers' has been used to deny the existence of important figures"
"Contemporary aerodynamics doesn't understand why bumblebees can fly; Experts blame Fatphobia"
Googling imaginary numbers actually did occur to me.
"Wave-particle duality provides support for non-binary gender identity"
good call, I should have thought of that one lol
"Wave-Particle Duality is a Non-Conformist Identity. That's a Good Thing."
I wonder if integers are phobic because they deny gender fluidity and partial gender identification. I'm guessing...yes.
You're a liar. That game isn't fun, it's depressing.
LOL
Relevant Ryan Long comedy skit: How to be a Blogger: LIFE HACK
https://youtu.be/I7VEx2dviNk
Is being racist racist?
Apparently, white people in romantic relationships with PoCs . . . are racists.
Racists AND masochist!. Terrible combo! Soul-destroying. However, here's the question that has literally been on all our lips at one point:
https://www.debate.org/opinions/is-white-chocolate-racist
heh. I'd argue that "white chocolate" was very low-level, harmless racist whenever it was used to describe a very dextrous white NBA player ex. Jason Williams or Mongolian Basketball Legend Matt Taibbi.
Maybe one racist cancels the other racist out?
Nono you see, if a racist and an antiracist get too close they will annihilate each other in a burst of feelings. Woke physics.
You sure they don't collapse into a Grey Hole?
Like a kind of Zen racism thing. So if you walk round muttering "racist racist" all day, in a mantra, like Allen Ginsberg annoying hippies in the 60s by ommming morning, noon and night...you will keep your racist impulses away, and accusations of racism from coming your way. It's a thought.
"Zen Racism" is great. It also reminds me that the guy who directed Conan the Barbarian calls himself a "Zen Fascist."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-news/10405943/John-Milius-the-craziest-man-in-Hollywood.html
But every thought is a racist one, if done by a white. Or so we've been told by Robin DiAngelo and all those Equity Specialists.
You gave me the idea of googling "racist+racist" and I got a different result than just vanilla "racist"
Notable 2nd result, a Medium article "Yes My Dear, All White People Are Racists"
A racist black person making racist comments about white people online. How unusual. Funny how it's often the middle class black people who spout this shite (successful mixed race people are even worse), seemingly feeling guilty they have succeeded in the face of a society they say throws every obstacle in the world in front of them. They get to have their white society success cake and eat it too, performing victim mentality shite online for other black people who aren't as successful.
LMAO! I wonder how long whites will put up with that before we all just shrug and say, "OK."
Another excellent comment. The beginning of the 'broken people' era, where everyone's goal should be to win the Oppression Olympics. Where you can be literally erased if someone misgenders you. Where if you're black, you're automatically exempt from any sense of social responsibility. Where it's possible to be born into the wrong body. Where men can magically become women, just by putting on lipstick.
Already there.
When YA publishers began using "sensitivity readers" to suss out any potential offense-giving content in their products, those applying for the jobs were desperate to claim any Intersectionality Points they could. So, before any actual, you know, *qualifications* for the job, they would put "queer, mixed-PoC, size-positive", etc. The one I found funny and which a disturbing number of them claimed, was "MIMD", which stood for "Mental Issues, Medically Diagnosed", meaning they had CERTIFICATION for their being fucked in the head. Yeah, that's who I'm wanting to hire.
I think they've moved on to "atypical cognition MD", unless they've completely dropped the concern about having a real medical diagnosis and are just SAYING they're fucked in the head and whatchoo gonna do about it? I mean, they let Robert put a ribbon in his hair and go whack off in the girls volleyball team locker room, how are they going to quibble about someone's claim to be mentally ill?
Air is racist, per Mother Jones (another one that was ones OK before the establishment corporations got their hands on it): https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2014/04/air-pollution-racial-disparities/
Relevant Ryan Long comedy skit: How to be a Blogger: LIFE HACK
https://youtu.be/I7VEx2dviNk
"neighborhood shade inequality?"
It is a real thing. Often the government controls the land on which a tree might be planted so it isn't like the locals can "help themselves."
I know how ludicrous it sounds, but it is much like Critical Race Theory, they symptom and not the cause.
But, yeah, the way NPR presents it is maddening. It is like describing the tiny mole on your cheek in great detail while ignoring the cancer destroying your body.
I live in a town on the edge of the Sonoran desert...ain't much shade here to speak of - does that mean an entire town that is about 85% Hispanic is racist?
Your analogy appears to be flawed.
Gary F.S. - bravo well written.
I will be more succinct.
NPR: losers losing.
I'm a liberal/leftist working in media in a major east coast city and I've found NPR to a smug fuckfest for years, almost solely piloted by the self-righteous NIMBYs (and YIMBYs!) you don't want to be trapped at a dinner party with (and I unfortunately have been). I've often longed for some actual thoughtful, earthy, working-class people involved in these kinds of enterprises instead of the faux-polite Ivy-league circle jerk that it's become.
But somehow Taibbi's still right fucking on here: it's become much, much, MUCH worse!
Back in the dawn of online dating, then living in Washington, I went out with one of the names everyone familiar with NPR would recognize in its list of staff at the end. Like you, I was pretty leftist, but even back then the cult of DC centrism had worked my dating partner so thoroughly that I thought I was in a round table with George Stephenopolus / Judy Woodruff -- desperate to prove establishment credentials.
Bro, you can't leave us hanging like this..who is it lol
Who was it? ;)
"Faux-polite." Exactly. I can't STAND that shit. That's actually the main reason I stopped listening.
I miss "Car Talk."
Me too; those guys were actually funny.
Long before they were on the radio, I used to get my car fixed at their garage in Cambridge. They had a special drawer in which they kept bumper stickers which they'd affix to the occasional late-model BMW (they'd have one of their younger employees do it on the sly); they read: "Steal From Me."
I miss Bob Edwards. I quit listening when they got rid of him. Long time ago .
Got twenty rusty but sound gassers in a pole barn (rural Michigan) Tig welders, lifts, the whole nine yards..Most of my guys had Covid...but don't vaccinate...were in the service ... hunt and have guns.. .they don't care about identity politics....But"Car Talk"???? Dang, we'd bust out the coolers and laugh our a$$es off....miss it like a pain...the Blue Grass Sundays is still pretty fine! It's local...
Timely: Ray Bamliozzi visits Cuba in 2016
https://youtu.be/XjOA5yHIGJc
*Magliozzi
I miss Bob Edwards. I quit listening when they got rid of him. Long time ago .
NPR exists to reinforce narratives and to establish comfortable identities within an ideological framework. It assures its listeners that they will not be alone if they crawl into the witty, velvety cocoon that it weaves.
It is very good at what it does, which is unrelated to fostering a curious and informed public.
I say this as a fairly left-wing individual.
Very true. Their game shows were an example of the witty velvety cocoon. But I stopped listening to NPR several years ago because I just couldn't stand the propaganda.
Even those game shows have come to sicken me.
Yep. Stopped listening to "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" 5 years ago... is it still on?
NPR is the middle-class liberal version of SCTV's Farm Film Report
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHkvD7-u7y8
Thank you for the memories, and the added laugh.
Thank heaven for SCTV. I grew up on it.
Yup. Remember when we called that "the party line?" Or, a newer term, the "Overton window." Basically group think, mutual back patting version of the party line.
There was a Blocked & Reported episode that discussed the NPR show Code Switch piling on a Palestinian-American businessman who they had determined was guilty of racism. He was guilty of nothing other than having a daughter who'd posted some racist/stupid stuff in her teens, but the way they treated it you'd have thought he'd been a secret Grand Wizard. It was incredibly fucked up to listen to, and really showed the intellectual rot that NPR has suffered over time.
That show is absolutely brutal.
Also the the description of it is relatively humorous "What's CODE SWITCH? It's the fearless conversations about race that you've been waiting for!"
....Who's been waiting for it?
I would be interested in fearless or open/honest conversations about race if I ever once heard one. Seems like 90% of the time "fearless" means "in lockstep with the current ethnic studies orthodoxy", and everyone talking is totally unwilling to stray one step out of line or admit any single piece of information or data which pushes against the prevailing oppressions Olympics framing of the world.
“Fearless conversation” means “racist anti white rant by black ethno narcissists looking for gibs.”
"entho narcissists"
I'm stealing that one. Thanks!
Yeah, the "looking for gibs" part can just be assumed.
There's a Mike Wallace interview with Morgan Freeman on the internet about race. It's self-explanatory and worth searching if you haven't seen it. Spoiler alert: Mr. Freeman is correct.
That episode of blocked and reported was crazy.... I can't believe this code switch show is taken seriously
Holy shit. Because of this piece, I have wasted the whole morning reading the most benign drivel in history. NPR is a glorified gossip column. What is it that these people want? White actors are only allowed to play the villain? White tick tockers are only allowed to perform dances created by other white people? White playwrights are no longer allowed to write fucking plays?!?!?! SHUT THE FUCK UP NPR!!!!!
Have you seen what Media Matters is like now? I hadn't cruised past it for like 10 years... holy moly it's worse than a tabloid.
There is no comparison between Media Matters, Salon, Slate, CNN, the Daily Beast, et al and right-wing outlets like National Review, Daily Wire, Fox News, et al. The sheer deranged lunacy of the left-wing sites has no parallel.
Touché
It is quite telling that NPR have removed their commenting feature.
Just about everybody has. It's a commenter's desert out there. Not that the comments were ever worthwhile, present company excepted, but one can sometimes get a feel for how much BS was in the story one just read by checking the comments.
Any comment section that isn't behind a paywall and isn't heavily moderated will be dominated by bots and contain so much noise as to be useless. And non-social media companies don't have those kind of resources.
LOL!
I nearly fell off my chair laughing at this. For humor value alone it is a worthy contribution to public discourse. "Pinned to the wrestling mat beyond the three-count"? Ha ha! There is truth in Matt's humor that somehow defuses the despair that I otherwise often feel about the censorship and narrative warfare he is describing.
This article brilliantly describes why my wife, who is an otherwise intelligent individual, has morphed into a woke social justice warrior in recent months. Years ago she internalized the canard that NPR is "unbiased" and does "great journalism". So basically she believes everything they tell her with the fervent ardor of a newly converted disciple. The fact that my tax dollars partially fund this media monstrosity is only the icing on this bad-tasting cake. I hope I live long enough to see these grifters defunded completely.
I feel your pain. Family and friends are so brainwashed into the Wokie mindset that I can't have normal conversations with them. Knee-jerk reactions to words (did you know that's actually racist?) etc. So I cut them all out of my life until they regain sanity if they ever do (which I doubt).
Me too Kinda getting lonely.
The idea that families comprise only the people with whom one shares blood is a propaganda myth. In the natural order of things, any nurturing group is a family. If nothing else, maybe the falling out over this kind of issue will get us back to the natural order of things where all that matters is the nurturing.
In my personal experience 9 times out of 10 when things get real bad it's family that steps in not friends. I'm talking real problems like death of a spouse, serious illness such as cancer, or a job loss forcing someone out of their home. This holds even when significant dysfunction is present in the family structure.
And bless you for having the kind of family that does. However, far too many people don't, and that's why the conditioning we've been subject to for most of a century that family is where you go because they have to take you in is so disastrous. People who lack the kind you have are left with nothing because they literally don't know how to form bonds outside that narrow definition. In the US, it's either "family" or "suck-it-up rugged individualism".
Is it any wonder there's a pandemic of mental health issues in this country, as the pharmaceutical industry makes money hand-over-fist peddling psychotropic drugs that don't really cure anything because you can't make money curing people?
I'm curious where you get the idea that "family" has been promoted when it's been attacked, belittled and derided in all media for decades. Matter of fact, for the last 30 years or so, the idea that your "real" family is whoever accepts (and nurtures, I guess) you, not blood relatives.
Of course, this shit coming from the American entertainment/information industry has been thoroughly poisoned so that "nurturing" becomes "lets you be whatever shit kind of person you want".
I'm sure we've had different experiences of "family" but I can't follow your claim that blood family has been "promoted".
Kurt Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle defined the family/friends you find on your own or that you know you belong with (could include some actual family, but mostly not) was your “karass”. The family you were born into was usually a fake karass, or a “grandfallon.” Substack has been great for bringing various karasses together and also for pointing out the grandfallons.
Good though
Excellent Utah Phillips reference!
I'm not, met a lot of other people who shun the Woke.
Our state media, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) is vicious and punitive with their woke culture: employees tow the line or they are purged. One of their dogmas is anti-Americanism, every broadcast takes a shot at you Americans, a sneaky little stab in the back, employees dare not praise America that is a career limiting faux pas.
Imagine their surprise at the coming woke Anschluss.
Union, the German word for union, do you mean the USA is going to take over Canada as Germany did Austria 12 March 1938?
*shhhh* not out loud...
I have said this before, but Minnesota Public Radio (and NPR), which I loved for 20 years, has become exactly this type of partisan viewpoint driven media for nearly a decade and gets worse each year.
There is often zero presentation of values (values which I often personally disagree with) which large swathes of the country hold. Long pieces on immigration policy, where not just the interviewees, but the NPR "journalists" assume that the only criteria considered for whether someone should be accepted (and if at all possible rapidly naturalized) into the US is "will they be better off than where they were living before?".
The very concept that any other consideration should be on the table, or that the law itself should be followed is at best totally ignored. When not ignored, such values/thoughts are treated as ipso facto evidence of extreme racism and white supremacy. It is a ridiculous joke of a presentation, absolutely just as biased as Ben Shapiro, and has driven many left-centrists like myself to treat it with the same disdain we do Fox News.
When the riots were very serious in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, and random cars of people were showing up at liquor stores and pharmacies with guns at 4pm on a weekday with police response measured in hours, you could turn on Minnesota Public Radio, and the entire discussion was on the main "peaceful march" surrounded by journalists and hundreds of police. That and regular programming like "Texas Poetry Hour".
Large swathes of time where you would have had zero idea listening to what had been a great local news station, where 90% of the staff is based in Minneapolis/Saint Paul, that anything was amiss from a public safety standpoint. It was a complete betrayal of its mission in the service of a political project, one which would have made Pravda proud.
What do we get instead of news? Instead what we get is daily racism update. Housing prices up? Article about how this is all about racism and differentially impacts minorities. Housing prices down? Article about how this is all about racism and differentially impacts minorities. Does either article provide much in the way of actual research or figures to back up this position? No. Weather unseasonably hot? Racism! Weather unseasonably cold Racism!
This sounds like a joke but it is not. Typically they latch on to some single datapoint, might even be a datapoint that this is 8.94% bad for white people and 9.02% bad for black people. They also often don't even consider if some other piece of data or way of framing the problem would show an actual benefit for minorities. That isn't part of the mission, ideology is their mission.
Conveying reality isn't the mission anymore...it is sad, at times I almost get emotional about it.
I recall the day I stopped listening to NPR. It was after the Islamist extremist attack in San Bernardino in 2015. As the piece began, I wondered, how soon before "BUT THE REAL VICTIMS ARE OF COURSE PEACEFUL MUSLIMS WHO WILL SUFFER THE BACKLASH FROM BIGOTED RACIST WHITE PEOPLE!". And sure enough, about 30 seconds in...
Whatever you do, don't click through to the link in the NPR article that provides support for their statement that conservatives "falsely portrayed the protests as riots. It's head-exploding propaganda by a former newswire.
This is exactly the kind of article that somehow doesn't sink in to a lot of already-polarized brains. Not being able to see one's own actions reflected in what a member of "the other tribe" is doing is one of the single worst causes of the division in America right now.
I get very depressed regarding a close friend who is a bright well educated guy, his wife too, academics. But they just cannot get out of the left wing thought bubble/echo chamber. At times you can see in them see the slight glimmer of awareness, but then they always stamp it out after another couple days of obsessively reading NYT/Facebook/Twitter/whatever.
Tucker Carlson, instead of being someone who is peddling 20% actively harmful nonsense, 30% bullshit, 30% run of the mill conservativism, and 20% reasonable critique of the prevailing ideological status quo, just becomes a crazy Nazi who views cannot even be considered. Why? Well the actively harmful nonsense of course. If you point out the left's actively harmful nonsense, well out come the parade of 8 million excuses, and why you should just ignore those parts or the presentation.
If you try to constrict discussion to just a single point and say "what about this?", well you better make sure the you find some messenger who is air tight politically. The world is divided up into "them" and "us". And no one associated with "them" gets their opinion considered. And these are thoughtful, reasonable critically minded people. I fear for what their less critically minded colleagues are like.
Academics/the over-educated are the very worst. I have to work with them at a college. Hard to stomach a lot of the discussions.
Many young people are stuck there too, even when they obviously aren't. I have discussions with my kids' friends (ranging 20-30 yrs old) and if you go through a list of specific positions, they would be more than slightly right of center. You hit two or three hot-button issues and they'll forget about everything else - they cannot see any nuance or grey area in a few topics and will only focus on those topics as all important..
It was kind of mind blowing to see Tucker and Dennis Kucinich acting like bestirs on his show yesterday.
But your description of them belies the claim, "And these are thoughtful, reasonable critically minded people." Perhaps you should reconsider that view of your close friend and his wife.
Right. Any correction of our own "tribe" gets conflated with allegiance to the other tribe.