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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Mort Kool Aids Up! |
| 2005-05-21 |
| NPR is my personal favoraite whipping boy, the sole representative for the haut-left in this country, and it deserves to die. Whether it goes quietly, or it goes loud, it must go. EFL ...snip... So should taxpayers, through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, continue to shell out $300 million a year to subsidize the Public Broadcasting System and its local affiliates? No. And should NPR and its affiliates continue to get $100 million a year from taxpayers? No, and snip On balance, I think public radio and TV can make a good case for continued funding based on their still-unique roles in media and some pioneering new ventures that PBS has in the works for teaching reading to young children and American history to teenagers. Wrong, Mort. Cable television has far better content than PBS in the history arena. And as the Boston gay sex guide fiasco has taught us, government goes a uniquely sloppy job in providing services where private companies can do much more and far better But in exchange for federal support, radio and TV owe the public balance - and that is what, in the most modest and non-intrusive way, CPB's Tomlinson has been trying to install. Wrong, again, Mort. PBS needs to go out of business entirely. The left has thrown our culture out of whack by slanting everything to their views. The only remedy is the 'death penalty.' Specifically, believing that the PBS show "NOW," formerly hosted by Bill Moyers, was tilted to the left, Tomlinson authorized a $10,000 study of the content of the show. Oh noooo. A study!! Censorship!! He also provided CPB startup funding for two conservative shows, the "Journal Editorial Report," featuring the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, and "Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered." And Tomlinson appointed two ombudsmen, liberal former broadcaster Ken Bode and conservative former Readers Digest editor William Shulz, to hear and investigate complaints about PBS and NPR accuracy and bias. Tomlinson said that monitoring of NPR was triggered by testimony from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) that NPR's coverage of the Middle East was persistently biased against Israel. That's a complaint often raised by others in the U.S. Jewish community. That's nice. Isn't that nice, folks? That NPR is biased against Israel is a little like saying a roadside bomb is bad news. snip... In the meantime, the question remains: Do we need PBS and NPR? No. Actually, I think, we do. You would.NPR, despite a liberal tilt on many issues, is the only radio source in America with worldwide range and penetrating depth. A liberal tilt? Tilt? NPR gives money from institutions wioth a vested interest in stories that are being reported. That's not tilt. That is propoganda. Let the left find other funding for it propoganda NPR itself, the producer of programming, receives only about one-tenth of its funding from the government through CPB. But local stations probably could not survive without it. Then there is not reason not to totaly eliminate funding from NPR. Let them survive like the rest of us do. And PBS, despite competition from other channels remains the standard for high-IQ cultural programming. I've upped my stanards, Mort. Up yours. And both PBS and CPB have plans for new ventures other outlets are unlikely to perform. A PBS panel headed by former Netscape CEO James Barksdale and former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Reed Hundt envisions major initiatives in early childhood learning, homeland security communications, public health information and local civic affairs broadcasting. Great, then let him invest his own money into such a project Mort musta pissed off a liberal sponsor for this ass-kissing session of his. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #13 For AC re: #12 Don't leave "Robert Is Coming" out of that list! For the uninitiated, AC's list were BBC's "personal messages," passwords to the French Resistance just before D-Day. "Robert is coming" was for Free French and Moroccan agents in North Africa, and "Robert" was Patton. If you haven't read Cornelius Ryan's "The Longest Day," celebrate June 6 and read it. Read Farrago's "Patton" too. About liberating Madison: our fair capital is known locally as "67 square miles surrounded by Reality." The city council (thankfully) voted down an ordinance banning advertising on vehicles, a hot-button non-issue; some intelligent person pointed out that the ordinance would outlaw the beloved Oscar Meyer Wienermobile (That's a 20 foot long 300 horsepower rolling hot dog on a bun). The "Progressive Dane" party members on the city council also want to force anybody who meets with a city official to register as a lobbyist, even if the person happens to be a business owner who has a question for the city pertaining to the business. Dane Co. needs liberation soon! |
| Posted by: mom (mrs. james) 2005-05-21 21:05 |
| #12 Thanks, James, didn't know that. I just heard the AM station while I was there. I think they had the Mao Tse Tung Hour on or something very like it. It might have been the Daily Minute of Hate, this was about starting time. A few words for our friends in Berkeley, Madison, and Cambridge: "Wound my heart with a monotonous languor" "Napoleon's hat is in the ring" "John loves Mary" "It is hot in Suez" "The arrow will not pierce" Stay strong now, liberation is at hand. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-21 20:35 |
| #11 I just heard NPR repeat the NYT's report on military shenanigans that had been resolved in 2002, which the NYT broke yesterday. Trailing Daughter suggested again that I not listen to NPR if I'm going to yell at the radio. ;-) |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-05-21 18:29 |
| #10 AC: Don't forget that there are TWO NPR outlets here in "enemy occupied" Madison. The AM station is yack yack yack, and I never listen to it, but the FM is classical music and news. The music part is very good. |
| Posted by: James 2005-05-21 18:20 |
| #9 Mort obviously likes NPR and PBS, but knows they lean left and makes the case they need balance if they accept public funds. Answer is simple, cut them off the public teat and they can do as they please, including pay taxes on profits, if any. Moyers is a washed up jaded has been who denigrates any potential encomium with his bitter bile. Fuck him - do an audit on the sources of his funds |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-05-21 15:50 |
| #8 ac..i hope you are sending that kind of cash to fred. he's got better programming. Maybe we can get him to add some bach too. |
| Posted by: 2b 2005-05-21 15:13 |
| #7 I do support NPR's classical music programming, with $2000 of my own money going to our local affiliate for that purpose last year. Other NPR outlets, mainly in enemy occupied media-dens like Madison and Berkeley, have banished Beethoven and Holst in favor of public-affairs programming that might as well be (and sometimes literally is) produced in Havana. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-21 13:11 |
| #6 Maybe we can get the Polish government to set up an English language "Voice of Poland" to broadcast uncensored news to the MSM-enslaved masses of this country. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-21 13:08 |
| #5 BTW, for 40 years VOA was a beacon of hope to the enslaved peoples of Eastern Europe. No wonder left-media whores hate it so much. Punks. I mean that literally, the leading edge campus rebels and their yuppie media-slut counterparts are taking it up the ass from media corporations, and they don't have a clue that it's happening. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-21 13:06 |
| #4 VOA is an official government source and, unlike PBS, it has no pretensions of independence. The government has not just a right, but a Constitutional obligation, to inform the public of its activities and the reasons for them. Another government media operation, Armed Forces broadcasting, is based on the need to provide media services in areas where civilian service is not available, or with an audience-specific emphasis that civilian sources do not provide. Keep in mind that left-conformist cable companies refuse to carry official Pentagon channels, censoring these on the assumption that some idiotarian cable exec is best qualified to judge political content. The institutional media (the "MSM") are in many ways a rival government, with their own policies, agenda, and strategy. Collectively, the small, parochial sub-culture centered within the media industry has been more powerful than the government at least since the Tet Offensive in 1968. The latter was a military catastrophe for leftist forces but the result was reversed in the public mind by leftist media exploiting a defacto monopoly. PBS is essentially the high end of the institutional media culture, and its contact point with the other major center of ideological control, left-subverted academia. There is no more reason for the government to fund this than there is for federal grants to the Zarqawi and his head-choppers. The media culture does not serve the terrorists, it is the other way around, the terrorists are essentially the action arm of the institutional media culture. |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-05-21 13:00 |
| #3 --Netscape CEO James Barksdale -- Didn't this guy pony up big bucks to either Bore or Cabana Boy's campaign? |
| Posted by: anonymous2u 2005-05-21 12:48 |
| #2 Raj, I always thought VOA had that title. |
| Posted by: Anonymous7489 2005-05-21 12:11 |
| #1 ...is the only radio source in America with worldwide range and penetrating depth. What arrogant, pretentious claptrap. The only penetrating depth I see here is the collective buttfucking of the U.S. taxpayer by these piously unique self-appointed arbiters of radio 'excellence'. Screw 'em. Let the market decide. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-05-21 10:10 |