Harry Shearer Presents: 'NPR - The Initials Stand For Nothing'

Check this out:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/harry-shearer/npr--the-initials-stand-f_b_697670.html

HORDES of comments are in full agreement, including a kick-off comment linking to the NPR Check blog! How refreshing.

New NPR lows:

- Blob Siegel's ad, in which he educates us on the fact that NPR's reporting 'costs money', is STILL being played relentlessly.

- Paul Brown and Craig Windham do first name-basis chit chat during the news updates. Crappy idea!

- A whole host of new, younger (and cheaper) names are getting into the NPR 'reporting' act. Who the hell ARE these people?

- Julie McCarthy did some innocuous humanitarian reporting on the Pakistani flooding, but she's said absolutely nothing about the man-made failures that contributed to the disaster, like Deforestation, (capital D) for one. As in Harry Shearer's expose, the media is insisting that the flooding is totally a 'natural disaster'. Oh, and she's still doing the most annoying pronunciation of 'Pakistan' to be found in the mainstream media: 'pawwk-ees-stawn'. If she’s after authenticity she’s after, I'm waiting for her to give the proper guttural pronunciation of the 'gh' in 'Afghanistan'.

- And as most everybody knows by now, Saturday's ageless superstar, the sermonizing Simonizer is bawling his way through all the NPRadiation belt, exploiting his 'beautiful' wife and his consumer-item kids, but with utmost 'propriety' and supreme mawkishness. At least Glenn Beck admits he's got a 'big fat mouth'. As for Scottie, he gets every green light to show off his inherent talents as an egomaniac.

- Juan Forero's taking a break from picking on Hugo Chavez and doing a few 'cultural' features, and with a voice that's a constant orgiastic climax wave, so schmaltzy and insipid that even a high school drama teacher would dismiss it as too hammy. But that's classic NPR: where sickening personalities get to inflict themselves on the audience in the name of being 'the nation's storyteller'.

- Finally, I have to admit that I'm 'sample-listening' to NPR these days, but it's UNDER CONTROL. There's one thing that I've noticed is really increasing at a frightening pace: practically EVERYONE on the air now is marketing a book. Yes a BOOK. More than ever. It's a total racket. Not only is NPR a corporate shill, they're now fully engaged with all conglomerate publishers to aggressively market books, because NPR listeners are, uh, book readers, ya know. This strategy is nothing new, but I swear the pitch of it is now feverish. Thing is, who's actually buying and reading all this crap?