Hey, there, NPR. Rude Pundit here. First-time caller. In the Big Apple, WNYC, one of your flagship stations, is having a fund drive. The Rude Pundit's been a continuous contributor for a few years now, mainly due to his unrequited crush on Terry Gross. But he feels invested enough to offer you a couple of pieces of advice as you go along.
First off, can you please tell your on-air fundraisers to stop comparing the cost of supporting a single public radio station to the cost of cable TV. You know what the difference is? If Garrison Keillor appears on one's TV, one can change the channel.
Okay, that's a minor annoyance. Let's move on to something bigger, like:
Could you stop being such acquiescent little bitches to the fucking assholes of right-wing blogging blabbery? (You might wanna put your finger on the bleep button.) Seriously, allowing your corporate agenda to be set by Andrew Breitbart is like allowing your balls to be waxed by chimpanzee.
Because between Ron Schiller
bullshit and now this
firing of Lisa Simeone, you've pretty much put your nuts in Bonzo's paw. Simeone is the host of one program,
World of Opera, and she used to also host
Soundprint before NPR forced the station that produced it to shitcan her once it came out that Simeone was doing some speaking about the October 11
movement in DC (which is associated with Occupy Wall Street). Breitbart and Tucker Carlson's
Daily Caller (motto: "Well, what the fuck else is Tucker Carlson gonna do?") called her a "spokesperson" for the movement, which is true if you mean she's a person who sometimes spoke about it. But not on NPR.
Now, you can say, NPR, that you have an ethics
policy that applies to everyone. It reads in one part, "NPR journalists may not participate in marches and rallies involving causes or issues that NPR covers." Except since when the fuck is the opera chick a journalist? And, you know, does that mean no NPR on-air personnel could attend, say, Jon Stewart's rally last October? And her other show,
Soundprint? This week, it's about Edmund
Hillary. Unless his skull is occupying DC, then who the fuck cares what Simeone's involved in in her free time?
And if the opera chick's a journalist, does that mean that NPR personnel cannot attend the opera because it's being covered by one of your journalists? Your code also says, "NPR journalists may sit on community advisory boards, educational institution trustee boards, boards of religious organizations or boards of nonprofit organizations so long as NPR does not normally cover them." So if Diane Rehm is on the board of an opera company, is she in violation? And let's not even get into the ethical dilemma of Mara Liasson appearing regularly on Fox "news." That's like a fucking in-kind donation to the Republican Party.
Mostly, though, what's it say about you, NPR, that the moment the slightest bit of controversy is voiced about anything, you immediately back down? From back during the Bush II administration, when you decided you needed more conservative commentary in order to appease those who said you were the liberalest of the liberal media (which led to some of the most embarrassing sputum ever aired on
All Things Considered), to the Juan Williams
nonsense to this, it just seems like the path of least resistance is also the
path of least self-respect.
http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/
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