Skip to main content

First things first: gut NPR!

National Public Radio is one of the gems of our society,
offering a broad spectrum of cultural, scientific, artistic
music, social observation, news and commentary.
It offers intelligent, moderate, and interesting points of view.

Recently, Juan Williams, who was a commentator for the network,
said on the network that he understood the fear many people have
when they see people in what seems to be typical Islamic garb
boarding an airplane, for instance.  Whatever Juan Williams
intended with his remarks, it did nothing to calm the obvious
Islaamophobia all around us.  NPR decided to fire Williams.

Fifteen percent of the funds needed to keep NPR on the air
come from government subsidies.  Years ago, it was decided
that the nation needed a public network like NPR as a moderate,
non-partisan voice of reason and culture.  Most of the funding
for the network comes from what seems to most of us to be
all-too-frequent private pleas for support.  It has to be done.

The very first formal proposal of the newly elected Republican
majority in the House of Representatives was to cut off all
public funding for NPR.  As Peter Hoekstra (R., Michigan)
said, NPR isn't his first choice of a radio station, anyway.
He prefers to listen to Fox Radio.  Imagine that!

House leader, Eric Cantor, had a much more delicate way
of finessing the proposed evisceration:  he said that it was not
government's place to tell a news organization how to do its job.
He wants to cut off all the money because NPR is partisan.

Cantor isn't partisan.  He speaks from a fair and balanced
position way over there on the far right; over there where
you can see Juan Williams.  And the Tea Party.  Glenn Beck.
Bill O'Reilly.  Rush Limbaugh.  Those moderate guys.

You have to commend the Republicans for buckling right down
to work.  Try to kill NPR!  They will get around to jobs and
the deficit, ending the wars, unemployment, and a budget later.
Pretty soon now.  First things first!  Maybe find work for
Christine O'Donnell and Sharron Angle.  Jobs, you know!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

That's all we want: fairness! Not more guns and more war! Fairness!

The five police officers who were killed in Dallas are certainly not the officers who killed innocent citizens. There is more than enough tragedy to go around. "What is happening to our country?", Mari asked this morning. I had no answer.  We do have an answer.  We do not want to say it. There are lots of answers, all of them pertinent. We are a racist society, like most human societies. We are a society in the midst of enormous changes-- social, political, economic--and we do not know what to do about it. We are divided unsustainably into absurdly rich, and an enormous number of crumbling middle class families, and poor. We have guns everywhere; military guns, guns just for killing people, cheap guns, heroes carrying guns into churches and supermarkets, idiots who think guns ought to be allowed in bars and schools and ball games and beauty parlors and political rallies. Our political process is almost useless. There are good people in Congress, but there...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Watching a Formerly Sane Man Descend into Abject Religion

If you read the previous post, you know the apparatus, pictured here, is a torture machine. There are ten of them in our house, purportedly to circulate air to dry out all the problems caused by a water leak. We live in Tucson:  it has not rained in Tucson since the Gadsden Purchase. A mudslide the size of the one in Washington State could course through our neighborhood and it would be bone-dry and stone-hard before it quit moving. I suspect it is the CIA, and probably the Border Patrol! We are, after all, only about a hundred miles from the border. I fully expect a large suburban assault vehicle to pull up to the house, and for lots of people with UPPER CASE LETTERS on their shirts to interrogate us, and I will have to explain that all the drugs I use come from Walgreens and Total Wine. But it won't work.  Our minds are going. We are getting short with each other and, if they promise to turn off the fans, I will confess to having invented the Arab...
Post a Comment
Read more