I feel like kvetching.\u00a0 How about you?<\/p>\n
Is National Public Radio<\/a> going corporate?\u00a0 Ever since NPR started airing commercials (although they call them “sponsor notices”),\u00a0their talk shows have become noticably Fair & Balanced\u2122.\u00a0 I’m thinking specifically about the Diane Rehm Show<\/a>, where, whenever she discusses politics or national policy, her guest list now invariably includes some administration hack, there to pitch the\u00a0White House line.<\/p>\n Remember the 2004 brouhaha over the monitoring of NPR for liberal bias<\/a>?\u00a0 Apparently that monitoring . . . like every other John Bircher crackpot wingnut proposal floated by the Bush administration . . . hasn’t gone away.\u00a0\u00a0My guess is that some of NPR’s corporate sponsors, sensitive to right wing hostility toward taxpayer-funded public programming,\u00a0are behind the watering down of Diane Rehm’s show.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, when an administration hack on Diane Rehm’s show referred to the “Democrat Party<\/a>,” Diane jumped right in his stuff, telling him in no uncertain terms it’s the “Democratic Party.”\u00a0 Last Friday, during Diane Rehm’s weekly news roundup show, several administration hacks used “Democrat” for “Democratic,” and she didn’t utter a peep.\u00a0 Has she given up?<\/p>\n What I get from the Long-Awaited\u2122 Petraeus Report<\/a>: we’re in for a generations-long occupation of Iraq.\u00a0 Start thinking Germany.\u00a0 Start thinking South Korea.\u00a0 Only with a hostile population dedicated to killing its occupiers (when they’re not busy killing each other).<\/p>\n Here’s an open question to politicians, military leaders, and media types: why can’t we name the vital national interest that’s keeping us in Iraq?\u00a0 Last time I checked, that vital national interest was oil.\u00a0 Wouldn’t we all be thinking more clearly . . . and making better decisions . . . if we acknowledged reality?<\/p>\n It could be argued, though, that we had an equally-vital national interest in Vietnam: rubber.\u00a0 Indeed, where would we be without rubber?\u00a0 And yet we\u00a0pulled out.\u00a0 So . . . have you had any problem finding a new set of tires lately?<\/p>\n Okay, one more and then I’m done: the\u00a0Blues Channel on Sirius Radio<\/a>.\u00a0 How come they have such a restricted playlist?\u00a0 It’s the same old stuff, all the time, and never any new blues.\u00a0 Apparently they’d rather spend my subscription money on executive salaries, not royalties.\u00a0\u00a0My son tells me XM’s blues channel<\/a>\u00a0has a larger play list.\u00a0 I’m considering switching over, but what’s holding me back is\u00a0the proposed merger between Sirius and XM<\/a>.\u00a0 Based on my experience with the Blues Channel, competition is XM’s sole impetus for offering better blues.\u00a0 If the competition goes away, you can bet your bottom dollar the surviving satellite playlist will shrink.<\/p>\n Kvetched out?\u00a0 Me too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I feel like kvetching.\u00a0 How about you? Is National Public Radio going corporate?\u00a0 Ever since NPR started airing commercials (although they call them “sponsor notices”),\u00a0their talk shows have become noticably Fair & Balanced\u2122.\u00a0 I’m thinking specifically about the Diane Rehm Show, where, whenever she discusses politics or national policy, her guest list now invariably includes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7,16,14,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-269","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumerism","category-culture","category-media","category-military","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pwoodford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}