Just heard NPR Morning Edition correspondent Steve Inskeep cut Rep. Barney Frank off in mid-sentence (audio link here). Inskeep says (at 4:13 on the tape) “the biggest part of the federal budget is entitlements.” Frank says “No, wrong, I’m sorry, the defense budget is bigger than Medicare, and Social Security is in fact self-financing, and still is.” Inskeep interrupts to say “Let’s stipulate for this conversation a very very very very very big part of the budget is entitlements.” Frank attempts to make his point on Medicare and Social Security again when Inskeep literally cuts him off … as if Frank were a UFO crank calling in to a late night talk show.
Clearly the villagers at NPR are heavily invested in the narrative that entitlements* are evil and must be cut. Fox News permits no stories that conflict with its narrative. NPR is different how, exactly?
I tried to post this to Facebook this morning but no matter how much I cut it down it went over their 500-character limit. I was able to post it under the discussion section of NPR’s Facebook page, though. Maybe someone from NPR will see it there and engage me in a discussion. Maybe monkeys will fly out of my ass.
Speaking of narratives and Facebook, my Young Republican niece in Cape Girardeau posted a Facebook warning about the “Barackalypse” this morning. I googled the word and what do you know, there’s a bigot in the woodpile:
Yes, I see from the Urban Dictionary link that “Barackalypse” has been around since January of 2009, but there’s no doubt in my mind my niece picked it up from Rush … she regularly channels Rush on Facebook, and I’ve called her on it before … just as I called her on this instance. In fact, I was going to copy and paste her entry and my comment here, but she deleted the whole thread. Out of shame, I sincerely hope. That girl is too smart to be copying other peoples’ punch lines!
Back in 1975 or 76, when I was a lieutenant, the USAF sent me to Squadron Officers’ School in Montgomery, Alabama. On the drive down, Donna and I cut across part of Mississippi. We pulled into a freeway rest stop to take a break. A state pickup truck with a road crew pulled in after us. Four white workers rode in the truck’s extended cab. Three black workers rode in the bed behind the cab. The white guys got out and sat at a picnic table to eat their lunches. The black guys stayed in the back of the truck to eat theirs. Donna and I felt as if we’d driven into a foreign country.
Alabama was more of the same. We were fine as long as we stayed on base with our classmates, but whenver we ventured into Montgomery we picked up on the same segregationist vibes, even though the “whites only” signs had been taken down by then. We were happy to leave the South and have never wanted to go back.
A few years ago I was driving with my father in a part of Cape Girardeau I hadn’t seen before. There was a big abandoned rock quarry by the side of the road, fenced off and dangerous-looking. Dad told me that was where the “colored folks” used to hang out at night, everything else in Cape being off-limits to them. And I realized I am from the South too, like it or not.
Rush Limbaugh … and I’m just pointing this out as a coincidental fact, folks … is from Cape Girardeau too.
* If they’re “entitlements,” does that mean I was ever entitled to opt out of paying for them? If so, no one ever told me.