Went out to dinner with my parents, who are in town on their way to Baltimore (pronounced Ballmer, tyvm) for my mother’s 50th High School Reunion, and on the way home heard about this story on NPR about scientists discovering that there are animals besides humans who can dance to a musical beat:
Two famous parrots and a bevy of YouTube videos have now convinced scientists that people aren’t the only ones who can groove to a musical beat.
Dancing has long been thought to be uniquely human. Toddlers will spontaneously bob along with music, but you never see dogs or cats listen to a tune and tap their tails in time.
So a couple of years ago, a neurobiologist named Aniruddh Patel was astonished when someone e-mailed him a link to a YouTube video of a sulfur-crested cockatoo named Snowball dancing to the Backstreet Boys.
“I said, you know, this is much more than just a cute pet trick. This is potentially scientifically very important,” recalls Patel, who studies music and the brain at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego.
I can’t find a way to embed the NPR videos, so you will have to go to their site to watch their videos. However, there is this offering of Snowball in action from youtube:
Apparently, Snowball’s favorite band is the Backstreet Boyz, so while he can dance, there is no accounting for taste.
At any rate, this is a rather long-winded way of just expressing how much I like NPR. For pennies of the federal budget, almost anywhere you go in the country, you can tune in to high-quality broadcasts for free. It is cheap entertainment, it is informative, and I simply can’t imagine driving without NPR.
I never really understood conservative opposition to funding for the arts and funding for public radio and television when I was a Republican, and I still don’t now. If somebody was willing to do what NPR does for a profit, they would. But they don’t, and it would be a cultural disaster if we were to some day lose NPR.
Maybe I’m different than most people in my love for radio, as I got my FCC license when I was fourteen, dj’d for a while at the local college station, and wanted nothing more than to work in radio as an adult, so I have always loved it. But to me, there really isn’t anything better than NPR. I have really slacked at donating and am going to make a point to support it more in the future.
/babble
Svensker
So why did you call Snowball a parrot instead of a cockatoo? Is there a cultural reference I’m missing?
Cockatoos are amazing birds, very affectionate, smart, they get jealous (our neighbors have two, females, who can’t stand the wife and scream at her when she comes in their space, but they loooove the husband), and I swear they have a sense of humor.
John Cole
@Svensker: Because I am an idiot and got my wires crossed. Later on in the NPR story it noted that numerous breeds of parrots can also dance.
R-Jud
Agreed. It’s even better than the fabled Radio 4 over here. I still send $250/year to WBEZ even though I haven’t lived in Chicago for five years.
Joel
I never understood the conservative opposition to NPR when I was living in Boston and receiving WBUR and WGBH, two of the top NPR stations (and PBS, too) in the country.
In Seattle, KUOW blasts a surprisingly large amount of leftist dreck. When the shit irritates me, I can’t imagine what it does to your standard conservative.
demkat620
That is just all kinds of awesome. The bird, not the music.
dslak
@R-Jud: Yes, while Radio 4 can be fantastic at times, it really has nothing on NPR.
Zifnab
I’m just trying to imagine this.
“Sup sup sup! This is DJ Cole and the Midnight Crew. Wanna give ah howlla to mah main man Chris. Snotch to the notch, brotha.
Now I’m gonna throw on a sweet little bit by Duran Duran. Peace homeys!”
But yes, NPR is awesome. It’s about the only radio station I listen to, especially when they’re doing back to back Creed, Nickleback, Metallica marathons on my local alternative station. (Seriously, Metallica was cool the first 4,000 times I heard it but I am so horribly overexposed it hurts.)
James Gary
Preach it, brother John!
NPR is an American cultural treasure, one of the few remaining. Also, most stations have auto-deduct memberships ($10/mo or whatever amount you choose) which means you don’t have to feel guilty during Pledge Week.
robertdsc
Can Tunch yowl along with music?
Terry Colberg
I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have NPR to listen to all day. And when I say all day, I mean from Morning Edition when I wake up to Talk of the Nation and The Story at night.
Violet
I donated to my local station this last fund drive. I love NPR and can’t imagine being without it. They’ve also started playing an hour of BBC News, which is much appreciated. I donated during that time slot to reward and encourage them.
Napoleon
I HATE Snowball. That scumbag conspired against me with Old Major and thank God the dogs chased him away.
Jon H
“But to me, there really isn’t anything better than NPR.”
I’d have to say I prefer BBC. What’s bugging me lately about NPR is the stupid intros and theme songs for segments on Morning Edition. Laying there in the morning sometimes I just want to yell at the radio, “GET ON WITH IT!”. And sometimes they seem to be dumbing down their scripts these days.
Also, the BBC news quiz show is more daring than Wait Wait, what with the openly lesbian host and the occasional classic British leftist rants from Jeremy Hardy, and having the announcer, a prim Radio 4 newsreader, read news clippings with saucy double-entendres (like a sports league official quoted saying they hadn’t had their balls out for weeks, or a man quoted saying he would continue “tossing, gently”). And it starts again tomorrow! Yay!
WereBear
We had a parakeet who danced.
He loved Mozart and the blues. We had a live BB King album he adored; when the announcer was giving the spoken intro, he would get all excited and find his favorite perch, then it was 45 minutes of grooving.
One of the reasons we didn’t get another parakeet was the high standard he set, which we didn’t think other birds could live up to.
Also, the three felines, who were too interested…
Napoleon
PS, I am a proud member of my local NPR station and since I started listening 8-10 years ago I have slowly listened to nothing but it.
Josh Hueco
Speaking of Bawlmer, I’m enjoying it even though I’ve been too sick much of the time to get out of my hotel room. People here are beyond friendly, which is a tad shocking for someone who has never been in the eastern time zone and was, to be truthful, expecting a mini-New York (all those reruns of Homicide prolly didn’t help). (yes, I don’t get out much)
I’m even thinking of becoming a Ravens fan, having finally ditched my allegiance to Dallas after coming to grips with the fact that Jerruh is more interested in running a reality show than a football franchise. (yes, I’m a bit slow on the uptake)
Oh yeah, and NPR rules. WBUR is a national treasure. Also, what Joel said about KUOW.
R-Jud
@Jon H: NPR does lack Jeremy Hardy. That is a mark against it, true. I was also quite taken with “Just a Minute”. RIP Sir Clement Freud.
Jon H
Dancing ain’t nothin. The famous African Grey parrot Alex coined the word ‘Banerry’ for an apple, from two words it already knew: banana and strawberry. Cause an apple is red on the outside like a strawberry and yellow-white on the inside like a banana.
Andy K
@Zifnab:
I can imagine young Cole getting inspiration from The World Famous Supreme Team.
Jane_in_Colorado
Snowball is actually a better dancer than my ex-husband.
JK
John,
Congrats on the name mention in the Christian Science Monitor, one of the most underrated newspapers around.
I agree with you 100% about the greatness of NPR and PBS.
I want to put in a plug for Pacifica Radio (http://www.pacifica.org) which lacks the name recognition of NPR. Their political and news programming is more left of center than NPR, but they are worth checking out for an alternative perspective
Pacifica Radio has 5 sister stations
http://www.kpfa.org, http://www.kpfk.org, http://www.kpft.org http://www.wbai.org http://www.wpfw.org
One pundit who never misses an opportunity to trash NPR is that insufferable douche Tucker Carlson. I can’t count how many times he has said a variant of the following
gnomedad
@R-Jud:
I assume you are aware that they stream on the internet?
Third Eye Open
I will put our station (WFSU) up against just about any other station I have heard across the US. Until this season we had two stations, one with programming (including BBC) 24-hours a day, and a 24/7 station with nothing but classical music.
I actually got canned from the local portion of the station for making fun of some of the listings in the religious calendar on-air. But its still a great asset.
Montysano
Because I’m a DFH, my radar is probably faulty, but: does anyone find NPR particularly liberal or left-wing? My wingnut colleagues rail against it, but of course have never listened. It seems factual, and it goes into a depth that other media doesn’t, but I don’t find it biased.
But yes, we’re all-day listeners at our house, and weekends wouldn’t be the same without Car Talk, Prairie Home, and This American Life (which has been on fire lately). Terry Gross also, the best interviewer in the business.
gnomedad
@Jon H:
It may not look as impressive as speech, but do listen to the article: they were speculating that it is neurologically related to imitating sounds.
Jon H
WBEZ had the best pledge drives, what with bringing Peter Sagal, Ira Glass, Gretchen Helfrich, and the rest into it.
I believe one year they did their pledge drive from a bowling alley.
Terry Colberg
Oh, I just want to mention that I screwed up when I said The Story was NPR, but rather it’s APM. Either way, I love my local station, KPCC, and everything it does. Oh, and as for the tilt of it, KPCC airs fairly even-keel shows — I save my consumption of liberal media for blogs.
As for the BBC, I love reading their news online and they’re broadcasted on KPCC twice during the day. Though sometimes they do things that are a little annoying, such as the other day, they were doing a story in Seattle and only did interviews with people who were at a square-dancing hall. How in the hell did they choose, let alone find, a square-dancing hall in Seatlle, I don’t know.
Jon H
@Montysano:
Nope. NPR is “liberal” because they a) discuss gay/lesbian issues as if they’re just folks and not moral deviants b) discuss the environment and science as if they matter.
But a sizable chunk of their political commentators bear the Fox taint, they bring Cokie on to say that a vacation on Hawaii might as well be a trip to Brunei, and they often bring hard right-wingers to opine on stories without counterbalance.
jackie
While I don’t know if it was volitional, I had a Basset Hound that wagged her tail in time with whatever music was playing. She also howled along to sitar music. (I’m giving away my age) It did seem involuntary.
Allen
While my wife used to be a local NPR reporter in D.C. (she’s moved on to being a press secretary for a non-profit), I never listened before meeting her, and I’ve never listened after she left, except for the occasional episode of Car Talk. While she was there I only listened when I knew one of her stories was going to be on, or when she was “running” Morning Edition or All Things Considered (“running” meaning doing the local weather, news, and throwing to the traffic person).
I guess I just find it boring. For getting news, I think I prefer the newspaper because if I’m not interested in a story, I can go on to the next one. Given all that however, I still support public funding. We can’t all like every piece or work of art, or every show on public television or radio.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
I met a man Bojangles and he danced for you
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Why am I not surprised that a bird bobbing on the first and third beat just had to be white?
JL
Snowball dances better than me. The youtube made me smile, thanks.
smiley
One of the most interesting things about different species is the difference in brain size per cranium size. An African Grey parrot’s brain is about the size of a peanut. Those who want to make that species into some sort of pre-verbal intelligence are just fooling themselves. It’s a bird.
JK
@Jon H: @Montysano:
I think it gets tarred as left wing due to the absence of any Rush Limbaugh clones as radio hosts.
Warren Olney – http://www.kcrw.com/news/programs/tp
Tom Ashbrook – http://www.onpointradio.org/
Diane Rehm – http://wamu.org/programs/dr/
Terry Gross – http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13
Brian Lehrer – http://www.wnyc.org/shows/bl/
and Leonard Lopate – http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate
conduct themselves with civilty and don’t engage in rabble rousing or fear mongering
Litlebritdifrnt
I love NPR in those moments when I am between my am radio stations while driving down to Columbus County. Car talk is my absolute fave, those guys crack me up. As for the dancing bird we have a Cockatiel (Harmony) who dances, while yelling “hello pretty birdy” My DH wants a parrot or a Cockatoo so bad he is quite deranged about it. Unfortunately I do not have the $1,500 to $2,000 laying around to buy one.
JK
Any NPR fan has to check out this website
http://www.publicradiofan.com
It features schedule listings for thousands of public radio stations and programs around the world
¡El Gato Negro!
If you know anyone who wants to start a huge, ugly, messy fight to remove all the corporate sponsorship from NPR, and refund it completely with tax dollars, I’m in.
As it is, they gradually became unlistenable years ago, as they slid too far to the right. Their coverage in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and of the invasion itself, was especially sick-making. Nowadays they act more like “National Public Relations” than a journalistic organization, so I’m less likely to help fund local affiliates, unless they run the BBC overnight, where there is a slight chance of some actual news being broadcast.
Like I said, huge messy fight to cut the corporations out? Let me know.
Otherwise, pffft.
srv
@Montysano:
This would be the superior PRI, not NPR.
Betsy
I used to listen to NPR every morning on my drive to high school. Once I went to college and didn’t have a car anymore, I really missed it (NPR, not driving), but there wasn’t usually a time when I was doing something with my hands that left my brain free to listen to spoken content. That is why I was thrilled when I discovered I can get various podcasts on their website. I still don’t have a car, but I can listen while I walk to and from work (or anywhere else I go) and at the gym. I don’t get to hear Morning Edition or All Things Considered very often, which is a shame, but at least I get some of their other content.
So yeah – I loves me some NPR. Unsurprising, I suppose, since one of my earliest memories is being in the kitchen with my mother on a snowy weekend late afternoon while she cooked and A Prairie Home Companion played in the background.
smiley
@smiley: Firefox crashed before I could fix that: meant:
Edited.
Litlebritdifrnt
@smiley:
Ya know its just a bird, but a smart bird, its just an ape, but a smart ape, its just a dolphin but a smart dolphin. We humans do not have exclusive rights on smart you know? I mean really, Dolphins spend all day doing what?, feed, play, have sex and play some more. Humans toil all day to ensure that they can do the above. Which is the smarter species?
JK
Links to cool radio websites
http://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/audio_library_audiolinks.asp
Elvis Elvisberg
This is on PBS, not NPR. But who but PBS would give a leading musician 7 minutes to jam on a children’s show?
Zuzu's Petals
Whatcha doin’ there, boy?
[tap dancing] I’m happy, Pa!
Whatcha doin’ with your feet?
[looks down] They’re happy, too!
Corner Stone
@Zifnab: I imagine something more closely linked to the DJ in the Wayne and Garth movie.
“you’re just a freak with a microphone”
neddie jingo
As a musician, I find it hysterical that Snowball frequently gets overexcited and wants to push the beat. But invariably, he listens back to the actual music, realizes what a solecism he’s committed, and picks it up again. That’s one musical bird.
Would that some drummers I’ve worked with were so steady.
Related note: Folks, you all watch way the hell too much cable news. I haven’t watched MSNBC, CNN, etc., ever, but have gotten just about everything from my local NPR radio station (and, when the visual accompaniment is absolutely necessary, PBS), and am a much calmer and better-informed person for it.
Jon H
@JK:
I am very much not a fan of Tom Ashbrook’s interviewing style. He interrupts a lot, he asks goofy questions, sometimes he just fawns all over the guest (usually when the guest is an entertainment figure, not so much with political figures.)
Terry Gross, on the other hand, is awesome.
Jon H
@smiley: “Those who want to make that species into some sort of pre-verbal intelligence are just fooling themselves. It’s a bird.”
So? Ravens have larger brains and are even smarter.
MMM
One would think that JG would invite a friend, such as me, to dinner with his parents. Or maybe you are embarrassed by me.
OK – I will remain in the shadows. You broke my heart.
Mike
When I was living in Vermont (about 20 years ago), I could get the CBC, and it was *amazing*. Comedy shows that were actually funny, science shows aimed at smart non-specialists, news shows that were actually informative, etc. No idea if it’s still that good, but it beat NPR all to hell.
But c,mon, John,
1. If you believe religiously that the free market always does things better than government does, you have to dislike government-funded media.
2. If you believe religiously that anything secular is fundamentally evil, you have to dislike actual science programming.
3. If you believe that anything that questions your party line (let alone disagrees with it) is un-American, you have to dislike any genuinely intelligent public affairs programming.
Thus conservatives hate NPR and PBS.
PeakVT
@Jon H: I’d have to say I prefer BBC.
The BBC WS is a useful addition to NPR’s news. However, their US coverage is very villager-ish, which irritates, and they provide way too much of it. They also use “Democrat Party” and “Democrat” in ways that are very Republican. I’ve asked them to update their style guide several times via web feedback, but it continues. They also have a lot of stupid stock phrases such as “the American auto giant Chrysler” – Chrysler is about the 10th largest auto global group, so its not exactly a giant. Their non-US reporting is better (AFAIK), probably because most other countries don’t have a huge English-language media complex that would influence BBC reporters.
Linkmeister
We’re on day nine of a projected ten-day drive out here for Hawai’i Public Radio. It looks like it will end early, as it has nine of the last ten drives.
I listen from 0700-1700 every day to the news stream, but we have two stations here, each run out of the same shop; the more popular is classical music.
El Cid
My favorite is the BBC World Service. The number of hours of my life listening to that in the background — particularly in the shortwave radio days before the intertoobz where one can listen to nearly anything from anybody anywhere anytime — is astounding.
There is no better single news broadcast in English than the twice daily Newshour.
The World Service has to be good because they actually broadcast worldwide, and radio is not a trapped audience like TV viewers. If you want English speakers in Asia and Africa and elsewhere to tune in, you better do better news and coverage than parochial British and U.S. views, even if sometimes there’s still that.
Most of their news correspondents know far more about the subject matter than most government officials and spokesmen they interview, so they don’t put up with a lot of misdirecting nonsense.
El Cid
@PeakVT: Exactly right. U.S. domestic coverage is generally the worst aspect of BBC news coverage. They don’t have very many correspondents here, and so they often partner with quite typical journalists here, who underwhelm with standardized coverage.
warren terrah
I have XM/Sirius satellite radio. They now both have 3 Public radio stations, CSPAN radio, the CBC and the BBC. There isn’t enough time to listen to everything. They have the normal stuff you expect from NPR but not ME or ATC. They also have Harry Shearer, News and Notes, National Geographic,From Scratch and a ton of stuff that’s just not on my local NPR station. World Radio has stuff from Europe/Oceania/Africa. I have heard news hours from Poland/New Zealand/Czech Republic/Ireland/Africa(doesn’t mention a country)/Sweden/France/Germany etc. and what always stands out is how much foreign coverage there is compared to American news. You can seriously watch a network news hour with zero foreign news. And we wonder why so many Americans are so ignorant about fureners.
omen
@El Cid:
in the recent georgia-russia clash, bbc echoed what the rest of so called mainstream media were suggesting. they painted russia as the aggressor without noting it was georgia who fired the first volley.
pbs worldfocus is my new favorite. last week they highlighted the campaign uneducated women in liberia started that ended up growing into a movement which helped oust the dictator charles taylor. i never heard the role they played in that contribution before.
do they award the nobel peace prize for a group?
JK
@Jon H: Reasonable people can disagree on radio shows just as they do with respect to tv shows, films, music, etc.
I still recommend that you check out Warren Olney, Diane Rehm, Brian Lehrer, and Leonard Lopate.
JK
@El Cid: I’ll give another thumbs up to BBC World Service.
JK
@omen: Also a big fan of Worldfocus on PBS. I wish they could expand their broadcast to an hour, but they manage do a very nice job with 30 minutes.
Bill Teefy
We are always in danger of stepping into it when we generalize but I think that statement is indicative of why you are NOT a True Conservative™ in the modern use of the term. Conservatives tend to like art that aggrandizes their status or their ideals or appreciate art in the collecting of it as a representation of wealth. The arts are squishy and undefined and thrive on nuance and variety. Conservatives tend to dislike abstract art and loathe performance art. Remember Conservative outrage over the Vietnam Memorial?
How many artists are conservative in the time that they are most productive? And we need to separate great craftsmen from artists. I am not talking about skill.
Now I am sure the resident True Conservative™ can probably dig up a few names and construe something they wrote or did to fit their point but it takes a lot more effort than it would to name liberal or anti-establishment artist. Further the artists they would pick are most likely to be long dead. Tennyson, Mary Cassatt and David were not Conservatives.
I think art requires empathy and a deep desire to share for the sake of sharing. It is just not in the Conservative nature to use their hard-earned tax dollar to pay some lay-about-artiste. And I have never heard a conservative just back off because they do not appreciate a piece or a work – the problem of incomprehension is always the fault of the artist.
Jon H
@Bill Teefy: “Conservatives tend to like art that aggrandizes their status or their ideals or appreciate art in the collecting of it as a representation of wealth. The arts are squishy and undefined and thrive on nuance and variety. Conservatives tend to dislike abstract art and loathe performance art. Remember Conservative outrage over the Vietnam Memorial?”
Conservatives don’t like to think.
Jon H
@JK: Oh, yeah, Diane Rehm’s voice is like fingernails on a chalkboard for me. I understand it’s due to some condition she has though. (I do like it when the BBC’s Katty Kay guest-hosts.)
For the most part, I’ll have to skip your suggestions. My listening dance card is full, and I’ve been listening less since I got my Kindle, and reading more.
Jon H
Radio Netherlands has some good English-language shows. I used to listen to them on the shortwave. When BBC cut back their shortwave broadcasts early this decade, Radio Netherlands made a big push to attract ex-BBC shortwave listeners in the US.
Nicole
John, you didn’t get your wires crossed- technically, cockatoos are parrots. (pause to push nerd glasses up on nose) They belong to the order psittacines. Within that group, there are three families, including the Psittacidae, which are called the “true parrots,” but it doesn’t make the cockatoos or the other family I can’t remember not parrots. Basically, if it has two toes forward and two toes back and the upper beak is curved (and also the movable half), it’s a parrot.
And that NPR piece was just delightful.
“She was not quite what you would call refined. She was not quite what you would call unrefined. She was the kind of person that keeps a parrot.”- Mark Twain.
JK
More kudos to NPR.
It looks like they were one of the 1st news outlets to report that David Souter is retiring from SCOTUS.
Daniel
I agree completely. I listen to NPR anytime I drive anywhere.
iluvsummr
That is one happy, dancing parrot. With atrocious taste in music. It was great to see that Snowball dances better than Napoleon Dynamite. And to see the other parrot on the NPR video bopping to Ciara’s “My Goodies.”
I contribute to public radio by automatic withdrawal from my bank account. Since I never got around to figuring out how to stop it, I’m contributing WBUR though I’m no longer on the east coast and to KPCC. I prefer PRI to NPR but they’re all good.
Calouste
@Montysano:
”
Because I’m a DFH, my radar is probably faulty, but: does anyone find NPR particularly liberal or left-wing? My wingnut colleagues rail against it, but of course have never listened. It seems factual, and it goes into a depth that other media doesn’t, but I don’t find it biased. ”
I think you got your answer right there.
Zuzu's Petals
Excellent piece on home (and family-directed) funerals today:
Talk of the Nation
Good example of important information getting out there to change the way people think about things.
NLB
Yes, I too am addicted to NPR and have been a public radio member for 10+ years. But, I have to say I’ve found them really annoying lately. Their insistence on keeping the likes of Juan Williams and Cokie Roberts as their resident “political analysts” is just stupid. Or, for that matter holding onto crazy-eyes Mara Liasson who had a conniption fit that Sam Stein from HuffPo got to ask a question at the first presser. Ana Marie Cox said she snottily asked, “Who’s next? Air America?”
:
Cokie is the astute “analyst” who claimed that Hawaii was too “exotic” a vacation for candidate Obama to take, and investigating Bush cronies for torture would be just “too distracting” for the D.C. establishment. And ole’ Juan went on Fox and called Michelle Obama “Stokely Carmicheal in a dress.” (The NPR Ombudsman later gently slapped his hand for the comment, but he never really apologized.) And, how can one forget Mara Liasson, who just this morning claimed that there is “no public support” for “nationalization of anything,” including healthcare. Really Mara? NO support?
:
And while I’m on a rant here, I’m sick of people calling them liberal or left-of-center. The Ombudsman herself went on a local L.A. radio station (KPCC) last year and said that this was the most consistent “misperception of [their] work.” They were not lefty at all, but very, very, “mainstream.” Are they careful and interesting? Yes, but to call them lefty is just plain wrong.
:
I’m old enough to remember their rather breathless, gossipy, judgmental coverage of the Monica Lewinsky thing.
AnneLaurie
Is there a “bird rescue” group in your area? I had a friend-of-a-friend who fostered a steady stream of bedraggled conures and neurotic cockatiels back to (relative) health & sanity. Last I heard (she moved to the other side of the country) she had adopted a 25-year-old macaw that had outlived its original human companion. Of course birds don’t get turned into shelters as often as dogs or cats but on the other hand they aren’t as easy to re-home, either…
AlanDownunder
My mum’s corella would dance if you whistled ‘hooray for the red white and blue’. Trouble is, no-one here has been able to come at whistling it since Reagan rendered it unbearably poignant.
Ramalamadingdong
I wonder if he can do the stanky legg?
Comrade Nikolita
That’s cool that the bird can dance with the music, but omg the squawking makes me want to rip my ears off.
gil mann
Oh, right, “Nice Polite Republicans.”
Look, there’s no earthly excuse for anyone to give Juan Williams or Cokie Roberts airtime, and some of the hosts are still flinchy from the Newt-orchestrated attacks of the 90s (I assume this is why an AEI flack can still get a fair shake from ’em), but who the fuck else on the broadcast landscape provides a steady diet of actual information? The science reporting’s excellent, the foreign bureaus are numerous, and the overall culture of NPR is reliably small-l liberal (you want big-L, listen to Thom Hartmann, but I can save you some time: union-busting is bad).
I’d be interested in seeing the overlap between the liberals who make fun of doctrinaire wingnuts chasing Specter out of the GOP and the ones who refuse to sully their ears with NPR because Mara Liasson’s kind of an asshole.
MR Bill
Once, NPR actually was a bit to the left, by which I mean, I was willing to take of the obvious lies of the Reagan and Bush1 administration. They got slapped down and became a rightwing target after they blew the whistle on Iran Contra, and got bogged down in the uncovered story of how Drugs were being run with CIA connections during that time.
They are more culturally left, perhaps, but now the NPR Washington Bureau seems like just some more of the Villagers, unwilling to break out of courtier status.
I had my Cokie Roberts moment when she compared Ronald Reagan to the Pope (while describing a George H. W. Bush trip to Europe)..I was listening at the gym on the treadmill and nearly shot off the back. The older lady next to me said “you were yelling at your radio!”…
There is Barbara Bradley Haggerty, who can’t seem to do enough for religious Conservatives, and of course Mara Liiason and Juan Williams have become part of the Fox Borg.
The Asheville NC NPR station play the BBC World Service from midnight to 5 am, and it’s a boon to an old insomniac..
NPR needs to be reformed and the Noble Black Feline is right:
make NPR independent, and less a creature of Washington..
Kristine Smith
I recall a PBS program years ago about parrots. They are extremely intelligent and require a lot of interaction with their people to remain mentally and emotionally healthy. The clips they showed of birds that had been left confined and starved of attention for years, who were effectively broken mentally, would have broken your heart.
So it doesn’t surprise me that these birds seem to like to dance. What always does surprise me are the reactions of scientists who always seem taken aback by the fact that animals appear to be more than fur/feather-covered sacks of instinctive reaction. Any pet owner could have told them differently, but we would have been accused of anthropomorphizing.
argh
I agree NPR is important and better than the cable news, but then so is my dog barking. It’s not pure poison, the toxin is just marbled in, but they still take orders from Wealth. It’s another tool in the Establishment holster, and the corporate funding proves that fact and makes it inevitable.
NPR went Con with the rest of the media, they had Board members come in with that right-wing ideology in the early 00’s “under the radar.” So it’s just another flavor of the Wrong that happens to retain the “form” of science reporting and other items to keep their public funding flowing.
Don’t know where that leaves them now, NPR went Con a little later and less full-throated than the others. They might reform and get rid of the Cons, except people aren’t particularly perceptive even yet to how the Right plays its game, so NPR gets a free pass. Like most are giving it here.
So, instead of coming to terms with their share of the treason, like our nation NPR is more likely just continue down the gray path of slow decline while the Right waits until people forget enough to start the circus music back up.
I don’t like the media anymore, if it’s not obvious. Not so crazy about the gullible forgetfulness of my fellow inmates, either.
gil mann
I’ll tell ya, once progressives learn how to make a solid argument without tacking on a self-righteous swipe at everyone who’s not quite as fantastically perceptive as they are, they’ll be a force to be reckoned with.
p.s. Greenwald was on NPR while I was typing this. Fig leaf, right? Or is he window dressing? I always get the two confused.
Mark
I don’t think it’s an exaggeration even to say that NPR gets “pennies of the federal budget.” About 2% of NPR’s budget comes from competitively-bid government grants, but these are available to any media company. NPR is no more funded by the federal government than any university, non-profit or private business that gets a federal contract or grant. If the federal stream dried up, NPR would probably be just fine (not that I think that this is a bad use of tax money).
NLB
“I assume this is why an AEI flack can still get a fair shake from ‘em.” — Yes, that’s exactly who was on Mara Liasson’s “report” this morning. She gave Alexrod a second or two to mumble a couple of meaningless things, and then gave AEI the rest of the segment to knock down the President’s first 100 days — in terms of political maneuvering, etc.
:
As has come to be the case with Mara, and Mary Louise Kelly, they simply parrot GOP talkingpoints, give no other full-throated response, and then take a snarky swipe at the end.
:
I still listen to NPR, and I probably always will. But, I do think that “argh” has a point about their under-the-radar-con-cover. Their cultural coverage is more left (if that means caring about science, the arts, etc.). But their political reporting is a hot, righty, Villager mess.
The Golux
I reconnected with NPR a few months ago when Colin McEnroe lost his show during the afternoon commute, and now I’m hooked. “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” is always a hoot, and lately, when driving home from weekend gigs, I’ve been enjoying “Jazz After Hours” greatly. I don’t normally listen to much jazz, but the stuff he plays is always fascinating.
Robert Blaszkiewicz
More about Snowball and an additional video here.
les
I have to join the (slightly) contrarian view on NPR. I listen a lot–our local Cyprus Avenue is a consistently fun music show–but their news is nothing like as good as it once was. As noted above, the number of commentators seconded from Fox should tell you something; and they catapult the propaganda almost as well as anyone. They give more facts than most of the MSM, but that’s a damn low bar; during the campaign, they played racehorse news as much as any. I can’t count the number of times I screamed at the radio as they weighed the political points of GOP ads, with never a mention of the absolute falsehoods they contained; and you can’t overstate the sheer villager idiocy that is Cokie Roberts. And the little stuff–al Sadr is always an “anti-American cleric,” as if there’s an Iraqi cleric who isn’t. The little things they used to expose, they now espouse. Has anyone heard an NPR reporter call torture, torture?
NLB
Les: “Has anyone heard an NPR reporter call torture, torture?” No, I have not. I even asked the Ombudsman about their ridiculous use of phrases like, “enhanced interrogation techniques.” She wrote back that in their refusal to describe torture as torture, they were in fact abiding by a “rigorous standard” of “ethical journalism.” To which I replied, “WTF are you talking about?! What standard is that?!”
:
Just kidding. I didn’t curse or yell, but I did ask for an explanation of this warped sense of ethical journalism, which sounds a lot like some bizarro spin that could only come from the likes of O’Reilly, Halperin, Allen, Rove, et.al.
:
She has yet to respond.
Caravelle
I want to have that cockatoo’s babies.
But their political reporting is a hot, righty, Villager mess.
I find that for a cultural program, “Fresh Air” does a lot of politics. And it’s great at it. No right-wing propaganda there. (I haven’t listened to it in a long time though. Their internet player doesn’t work well anymore)
omen
@Kristine Smith:
ever see wild parrots of telegraph hill? that docu broke my heart. left me half weeping with grief because of the unexpected outcome. the other half, angry at the filmmakers for having been emotionally manipulative.
Caravelle
One of the most interesting things about different species is the difference in brain size per cranium size. An African Grey parrot’s brain is about the size of a peanut. Those who want to make that species into some sort of pre-verbal intelligence are just fooling themselves. It’s a bird.
Whaaaat ? People observe specific and tantalizing behaviors in a parrot, and you answer that… it’s impossible because of their brain size ? What does that have to do with anything ?
On NPR’s left-wing bias : I expect those who thing it has one are those Colbert was needling when he said that “reality has a well-known liberal bias”.
Richard Wang
@Jon H:
So true, NPR did a totally crappy job on the run up to the Iraq debacle, pretty much missed the financial meltdown, the high tech melt down, etc.
Their political reporting has been terrible (and that is being kind). Having Juan Williams, Mara Liasion (who I used to kind of respect), and Cokie Roberts (ditto from Mara), as their main political analysts makes them fox lite as far a I am concerned. Give me Rachel Maddow any day.
omen
parrots can identify specific colors and complete wooden block puzzles. that isn’t a form of intelligence?
more interestingly, why would people want to deny creatures their intelligence?
Gus
Minnesota Public Radio has this air of arrogance as if the world owes them. It’d kind of annoying. They spent a bundle building a nice state of the art studio in St. Paul, knowing that there was a good possibility that the proposed light rail project from Minneapolis to St. Paul would run right by their building. Now that the light rail proposal does, indeed appear to be slated to run by their office, they’re raising a stink. Oh, and their CEO just sounds like a sanctimonious prick. The programming’s great, though.
NLB
@Caravelle: Excellent point about the grand, wonderful exception that is Terry Gross. I’ve found myself going back to re-listen to programs I’ve already heard from “Fresh Air” multiple times per week as I cook, clean, do whatever.
wrb
This is news?
Our cockateel dances every day.
The surprising bit is what he likes- the more complex the polyrythm the better.
Meters, Prof Longhair, Dead, Fela Kuti– even outside jazz like Ornette or electric Miles…. and he rocks out.
Gus
@wrb:
Now your bird has good taste! I remember seeing a show, I think on PBS maybe 10-12 years ago that featured parrots and cockatoos. I’d love to be able to find the show if anyone remembers it. There was a wonderful sequence where a parrot climbs under the covers to snuggle with its owner. It’s really amazing how intelligent these creatures can be.
wrb
@Gus:
When first got him I bought him a cd of Snow White figuring that whistling along with “Whistle While You Work” would be about the right speed for his bird brain. When I’d play it he’d sit there looking grumpy, as if thinking “When will this damn baby music ever end”
wrb
I used to listen to NPR news every day but I probably haven’t once this last year. Their quality is way down. They kept the most annoying people- Scott Simon, Lianne Hansen, Juan Williams, Cokie- and lost the good ones- Bob Edwards, Noah Adams etc.
Still keep the radio tuned to the public station for Fresh Air, music, Prairie Home etc. but turn it off during their news.
Zuzu's Petals
@omen:
Yeah, that was a memorable movie.
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Kristine Smith
@omen
No, I didn’t see Wild Parrots, but I have heard about it.
pseudonymous in nc
My foreigner’s perspective is that NPR too often seems like it’s up its own arse. (PRI programmes don’t suffer from that, for the most part.) I also can’t listen during fundraisers, not after the dead-on parody done by the Grand Theft Auto people: “You’re listening to VCPR. Finally, a radio station for teachers and librarians.”
Now, the BBC’s domestic radio output isn’t, as a whole, intelligent highbrow stuff. (Nor is CBC, though that can be worth a listen, esp. if you have sat-rad.) But Radio 3 and Radio 4 are institutions, and you can assemble a decent day’s listening out of them. (Speechification is good at picking out the unexpected gems.) Plus, the World Service is invaluable.
Sheryl
Because, cockatoos are parrots. Amazons are parrots. Macaws are parrots. Most, but not all “hookbills” are parrots. Even the little ones, like the lovebirds, cockatiels, and parakeets.
mclaren
The Backstreet Boys have a collective IQ equal to Snowball’s, so it makes sense.