Tuesday, April 29, 2008

A Daring Proposal For NPR

When daring to dip into NPR I find it impossible not to become a self-appointed Style Critic, not for my own amusement, but because the general persona of NPR is so damn intrusive and obnoxious.

(When I listen to BBC, which isn't what it used to be, but is still light years ahead of NPR, I tend to listen to WHAT they are saying instead of HOW they are saying it - a process that strikes me as perfectly appropriate, and is what radio should be.)

So, a question: has anybody else made note that the delivery of both Renaay and Inscreep on Morning Edition has become EVEN MORE affected? It's as if they want us to be amazed at everything they say - every sentence has an exclamation point after it. It's like, 'you've just not gonna believe what I'm about to tell you', - that kind of thing. I know, it's all obviously part of the grand strategy to get America's young people on board and NPR-ize them while the iron is hot. It certainly worked for Fox, while CNN (which has their own 'fair and balanced' issues) was left in the dust. I can just imagine that Roger Ailes is a 'silent consultant' to NPR.

Also, has anyone checked out Auntie Liane's new 'Sunday Soapbox' (really condi-scending title, huh?) bloggishness on Weakend Edition Sundae? She can sound very pouty on the air sometimes, and she sounded VERY pouty when she was talking about the new blog. Perhaps she anticipates a shitstorm of criticism from listeners who would have the audacity to question NPR's perfection.

I'll end with a dare: hey, someone at NPR, are you listening? Why don't you assign one of your reporters to review the cogent blog: NPR Check? (Link at side.) Why can't someone like John McChesney or Daniel Zwerdling do a story on it?

Cat got your tongue? I'm not surprised. The timidity of NPR is a dead giveaway for their role as a mouthpiece for corporate interests, plus it exhibits a BushCorp-like contempt for the blog culture.

Saturday, April 26, 2008

Sizing-Up Pint-Sized NPR

For anyone still believing ANYTHING the Bush Administration might be 'announcing' these days, I would refer you to NPR News, as they and their crack team are ready to swallow any ejaculation BushCorp might chance to spew from any orifice of humiliation. Because, the mighty folk of BushCorp always know that the good grovelers at NPR will always line up at the slop trough to take the leavings and the droppings left as tantalizing bait. Because they know that NPR is just stupid enough to snort up said droppings in order to show them off as trophies, as if they're breaking new ground, or something. Little do they know that BushCorp surely rolls their eyes and scoffs behind their backs at the thing that is NPR. Because, if they did the same thing with those faith-based outfits that thought BushCorp would HELP them (i.e. mock them in their absence), why wouldn't NPR be mocked in their absence, as well? It would take a mucking thesis to explain what I'm trying to say properly, but hopefully, you'll know what I mean.

NPR no doubt prides itself on being 'savvy', but how come they usually end up being the stupidest dumbshits on the block? Can they not conceive of the fact that they might be taken for a ride on a REGULAR basis? If I'm sitting out here in, say, Weeping Water, Nebraska, figuring this stuff out, how come these things evade the Beltway vets of NPR? Huh? Why? - because they're STUPID, and they've lost their way, long ago, if they even WERE on the right track. The rantings of a dissatisfied listener? Hardly. It doesn't take too much sophistication to figure out what a bozo operation NPR is. Just scan this blog to consider their record of disgrace and worthlessness. Tune in elsewhere!

And considering some of the latest Nepali developments:

Well, all I have to say is that I've been to Kathmandu and I have grave doubts as to whether many of these NPR reporters are actually in touch with many of the places they are supposedly reporting from. Why, even a Fox News reporter can bring more life into a given locale than these supposedly 'intelligent' but boring NPR hacks can. They can spin suppositions for their sponsors and their prospective audience, but THEY DON'T KNOW HOW TO REPORT STORIES because they are so preoccupied with their spin assignments and how they're going to 'creatively write' their assignment, so they're unable to objectively observe and communicate. You know, like reporters are supposed to do. They think they're (a right wing) Joseph Conrad instead of what they should be: a relatively anonymous conveyer of news.

I might add, it was a member of the royal Nepalese household who bumped off most of the royal family. Their genes are deleterious. Move on to a republic, despite it being branded as 'Maoist'. What does 'Maoist' actually mean any more, anyway? Perhaps a movement that selects a name from a neighboring country to imply CHANGE? Keep in mind, in China, the official line goes something like: 'Mao was 30% right and 70% wrong’; however, from the Nepalese side, Mao is a figure who actually made change happen, and it has lasted. But Mao was a commie, wasn't he? Americans have to realize what a mixed bag events in history are. I doubt if anyone at NPR could explain that very fact with anything less than a smirk. For this and so many other reasons, I cannot bring myself to forgive NPR for the damage they've caused. Rather like the Bush Administration (ALL of 'em!)

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Uh, Uh, Uh, Uh, Um, Uh, Uh, Uh - Uh, Um


Fig.1 Do NOT adjust your monitor! This is an actual, un-retouched photo of Dave 'n Ry, showing the appalling effects of Green Zone Blood-On-One's-Hands Malaise, which has all sorts of awful symptoms, the least of which are these horrible blood-warts. Notice how Ry's actual hands apear bloodless! 'Tis the deception of the Malaise - one of its most insidious qualities! Thus, BEWARE OF THESE PEOPLE!!

I wish I could say something - anything at all - about the Field Marshall Petraeus/Sidekick Ry Crock Show, which just wrapped up...

Ah! I thought of something: Ry said 'uh, uh, uh, um, uh, uh' a LOT. Nervous, perhaps?

The September go-round was much more fun. I don't think anyone's even going to revise or revive the 'Leave Gen. Petraeus Alone' parody this time. Pity.

It's a bleak, bleak house we've inherited, folks...

When I Grow Up, I Wanna Be A Critic Of Campaign Ads! Really, I Do!

Boy, I just heard a segment on NPR's 'All Thinktanks Considered' where Mee-chele Norris and some doofus named Kenny Goldstein 'reviewed' new ads put out by the Obama and Clinton campaigns in PA. I think 'disdainful' is perhaps an adequate term to describe their sophisticated picking and poking at these ads, as if they were rotting caviar samples on burlap crackers, or something worse. Their disapproval reached toffee-nosed proportions, because, heavens above, there just wasn't anything at all that these two seasoned individuals could find of value in those darn ads. No 'information' or anything! So, there was plenty of fussin' and snortin' over such media nonsense.

In one simple sentence, these wiseapples could have covered their flat asses at least by saying something like, 'In the campaign ad world, it's a cynical biz, so all sorts of wacky things are tried..' Or something to bring us back to objectivity, rather than leaving us with the obvious conclusion that these dilettantes have it out for both the Dem candidates.

Just a little bit of snottiness leaked through poor Mee-chele's usual solemnity, but it was delivered with just a dash of smoky seductiveness. Snotty can be sexy!

Narcissist Priggish Radio at its best.

I'm sending NPR a bill for the necessary steam-cleaning of the vomit spray that my pet hyena made when he heard this tidy little segment.

Douglas Feith Is A Contemptable Bastard, BUT, He's Out There Slugging While His Fellow Neocons Tremble In Their Protective Privacy

NPR, in order to form a more perfect bond between its corporate and military/industrial patrons and its needy audience, remarkably offered up an interview with the worthy Douglas Feith, former Undercover Sec. of War, just in time for his tell-it-like-it-was/cover-his-ass-NOW memoir to be laid before the public by Rupert Murdoch, via his HarperCollins hack-house.

You almost have to give Feith credit for being audacious enough to step up to the media circuit (in order to sell a committee-written 'memoir') and doing damage control before other Neocons beat him to it. Feith is one of the most perfect examples of how this country has been overtaken with deeply, deeply flawed and mediocre personalities, who have been allowed to run the show. Sort of like what happened to Germany in the 1930s.

But that's what psychopaths are good at: spreading their own appalling delusions. If I were in his neighborhood, I'd be making a citizen's arrest of this hideous excuse of a person.

As for NPR, they're just as complicit. They're so tied into the book-selling racket, it's just a case of one hand washing the other.

One of the many reasons to weep for this country, and what it could have been...

Part 2 was just as much a vacuous waste of time as Part 1 was. I got a huge kick out of Inscreep's 'impatient' approach, as if he's the righteous one standing up to the much-hated Feith. And the trading of gobbledegook between them, like sharing the same foul wad of bubblegum, was DC-Speak at its finest: Luntzian legalisms aplenty. That kind of talk, with its ersatz terms and its obfuscation, is a key factor in the hijacking of the nation by the few and its ruination for the many.