I am happy that the Republicans have come finally come for the totebaggers. NPR would be better off without federal funding anyway and maybe now the liberals who listen in will pull their heads out of David Brooks’ ass long enough to realize that we are in a class war here and you have to choose sides. Stop musing about the Burkean merits of school vouchers and hit the fucking streets like they are in Madison.
Also too, NPR needs to realize there is no way to appease the Reichtards.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
David Broder died.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
here’s the link.
Lolis
Not sure this can be spun as good for NPR.
Stav
As one quick twit noted, he will now spend eternity pleading for compromise between God and Satan.
Zifnab
I’m honestly a bit mixed on PBS / NPR losing funding.
On the one hand, I think they’ve got a lot of quality programming even if it is mixed in with AEI-sponsored drivel. And I’m happy to see my tax dollars fund it.
On the other, I haven’t forgotten the Bush Administration’s push to seed the organizations with his cronies. Maybe cutting the government cord will free the network from mealy-mouthed political correctness and “both-sides”-ism.
When 90% of your funding already comes from viewers and listeners, the end of public financing won’t be a death blow. But when that same funding comes from oil companies and billionaires with agendas, I can’t see the networks growing less debted to their corporate sponsors.
There’s a good chance that cutting public financing won’t change a damn thing for good or for ill.
Rob
I’m sure they’ll be fine sine Rupert Murdoch is about offer them jobs to defend free speech right?
Pococurante
Next stop, Roe v Wade because now they finally have the votes to do it…
TooManyJens
The governor of Illinois just signed the death penalty repeal!
Poopyman
I would feel better if, should govt funding be zeroed, the entire Board of Directors at NPR either resigned or got frog-marched out. They’ve been pulling some weak-assed shit, and I’m in no mood to give my money to those poosies.
General Stuck
David Broder died.
he now straddles
that big fence
in the sky
RIBP
gypsy howell
They’ll go down trying though. And it will be very painful to
watchhear.hilts
Doug,
Because you can never have enough interviews with David Brooks pontificating about his magnum opus The Social Animal
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june11/davidbrooks_03-08.html
You’re Welcome
Southern Beale
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
From your link:
Wow. I forget how long we’ve been dealing (or rather NOT dealing) with the healthcare issue.
General Stuck
The juvenile delinqent Cheetobaggers don’t stand a chance.
Bob Loblaw
Perhaps the yuppies (ahem, totebaggers as you call them) have taken sides, DougJ. Perhaps they just prefer faux Seriousness to genuine seriousness.
If it’s a full out “class war,” how much attrition and “betrayal” can you reasonably expect from the upper middle and beyond?
Shoemaker-Levy 9
I sometimes listen to NPR stations for music, for instance if they’re playing jazz or blues or something else you can’t get on commercial radio. I hope that option doesn’t go away, but if the news/public affairs part of it is being run by sniveling little cowards then fuck ’em. If you think that Tea Partiers are a bunch of racists and you are a media executive then keep your mouth shut, OR be proud of it. One or the other.
4tehlulz
“You are going to break the government.”
I find it sad that a GOP candidate used to claim that breaking the government was bad and that now it’s a foundational goal of the Republicans.
GHWB would have been crucified for that statement now.
Poopyman
Well if I’m not going to give money to NPR, it seems another org is rising to fill the void. From an email just now:
Woo hoo! Totebags!
Doug Hill
@Bob Loblaw:
I don’t think all totebaggers are yuppies.
beltane
Maybe if NPR/PBS are limited to contributions from listeners and viewers they will be cured of the beltway contagion and immune to attacks from wingnuts. Also, there is a chance that we will never have to hear Cokie Robert’s voice again.
With David Broder gone, who will be Atrios’ Wanker Emeritus?
Bulworth
Answer: for a mightly long time. At least we don’t cover Everybody, like all those other countries. Sure, some people might suffer. But the important thing is we don’t cover everybody.
Maude
David Brooks does sound a bit like Britney Spears. The post title of, Do it to me one more time, was a good match.
Bulworth
@Poopyman: I can haz plz Balloon Juice totebag with picture of Tunch?
Mike E
@TooManyJens: Now, I have something to celebrate today!
The Moar You Know
Screw NPR. They’ve been carrying water for the GOP since the start of Iraq II, and have only gotten worse in the years since.
Maybe they’ll figure out that Republicans can’t be appeased and are not their friends…but I doubt it.
piratedan
@Lolis: but it’s probably good news for John McCain
Mike E
@beltane: Perhaps in memorium Atrios can call it “Broder of the Day”
Gene in Princeton
The day I turned on All Things Considered last year and heard Jeffrey Goldberg being interviewed as an expert on the Middle East, Iran in particular, to the exclusion of any one of a number of actual experts…was the day that stopped caring about NPR. It can dry up and blow away as far as I’m concerned.
hilts
OT
Newt Gingrich: “There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing them. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness. Not God’s understanding, but God’s forgiveness.”
h/t http://blogs.cbn.com/thebrodyfile/archive/2011/03/08/newt-gingrich-tells-brody-file-he-felt-compelled-to-seek.aspx
Pooh
“Also too, NPR needs to realize there is no way to appease the Reichtards.”
This this this, a thousand times this. The RWNM making RWN is a sunk fucking cost, I wish liberal pols would internalize this and stop cowering every goddamn time.
Bob Loblaw
@Doug Hill:
2009 NPR demographic information:
http://www.wqub.org/media/NPR%20Profile%20stats%202009/NPR%20demographics.pdf
86% white
65% have a bachelor’s degree or higher
median household income: $86,000
median age: 50
You’re right. They’re not yuppies. The ‘y’ in yuppie stands for young. They’re old-assed former yuppies instead. My bad.
Citizen_X
@Bob Loblaw:
Oh, please. NPR is the station of the overeducated and underpaid; ie, the school teachers and academics. These people may want to make it into the upper middle class (like most of us), but only a small percentage of academics actually get there. (Despite what Charlie Rose may think.)
Edit: @Bob Loblaw: Well! OK, you’re right about the overall listenership. But my point about the teacherly types stands; they skew hard to the lower side of that median.
Southern Beale
Newt Gingrich blames his cheating on Bill Clinton. Because everything is ALWAYS Bill Clinton’s fault! This is Clinton Derangement Syndrome on steroids.
jibeaux
My affiliate already does pledge drives every season. For what feels like a very long stretch of time. If they have to get more funding from listeners, I think they’re going into a death spiral where they have to pledge drive more but they get fewer listeners because it’s all just pledge drives.
But I think politically it’s a bad move. Not that NPR probably has a huge base of intermittent voters it could mobilize, but the more distractions chip away at the Republicans’ laserlike focus on jobs and the economy (please note: snark), the worse it is for them.
Southern Beale
@Gene in Princeton:
Yup. Liberal Media Fail, NPR Edition.
NPR’s ability to swallow right wing talking points whole has me not giving a big shit about them. But I do hate that the RW is able to demonize NPR when 80% of their programming is cultural stuff that is completely a-political.
Southern Beale
@Poopyman:
I gave money to LINK and got a tote bag.
Just sayin’.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
NPR is odious.
I donate to this guy, Jesse Thorn. He is on a few broadcast stations via PRI. He does really interesting stuff. Really knows his hip-hop too. In spite his almost painful whiteness.
http://maximumfun.org/
trollhattan
As I noted in open thread the federal money keeps a lot of local station doors open, regardless of what one’s position on NPR/PBS et al may be. Kill the federal funding and it’s gone forever, and a lot of local public stations will be sold off, also gone forever.
I do not want this to happen.
hilts
Ron Schiller decides not to join the Aspen Institute
h/t http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/romenesko/122506/ron-schiller-will-not-be-joining-the-aspen-institute
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Bob Loblaw: Household income, right? Two 50yos making 86K total? Probably with kids in college? That sounds more like the middle-middle.
Hardly suffering but probably no Jag in the driveway.
ThresherK
I can’t imagine NPR doing things any better without the federal “strings attached”. Who there is chomping at the bit to stop the false equivalence parade of right-wing welfare thinktankers? Who is going to smarten up, stop privileging the lies, and stop checking with the Beltway Inbreds for the narrative of the day before writing stories?
There is a market for what NPR is supposed to be. Somewhere between Steven Colbert’s commentary, satire and media crit, and Democracy Now for in-depth reportage, commercial appeal be damned.
I cast one more vote for the kind of fine, quality programming* many local public radio stations provide, such as WAMC’s The Media Project and almost anything from WNPR (No Relation) (Really, the N stands for “Norwich”.)
*h/t Guy Caballero
PeakVT
@Zifnab: Uh, 90%? Try 32% for member stations, 0% for NPR.
FlipYrWhig
@hilts:
He was so passionate about the country that the patriotic passion just came surging out of his pen1s?
Poopyman
@Southern Beale: LINK already gets my cash, and I’m happy to give it.
ETA: Mrs P must have the totebag, though.
debit
@FlipYrWhig: Sometimes the fires of patriotism have to be stoked, again and again and again, harder and faster until there’s an eruption of patriotism that can only be dealt with by a handful of kleenex.
Bob Loblaw
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
The median household income nationwide is only $52,000. The median household income of NPR listeners is 65% higher.
This country really struggles to even visualize income inequalities, let alone remedy them.
hilts
@FlipYrWhig:
Gingrich Vitter 2012
Penis Passion
debit
And OT but MST3K’s TV’s Frank (Conniff) is writing fiction. Truly, a work of heartbreaking beauty and inspiration.
someguy
@Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel):
That’s about $2k short of 80th percentile. That’s upper middle, aka bordering on wealthy. Make $2k more and they’ve arrived in the class we need to start taxing a bit harder, ‘cuz they’ve got theirs.
I guess you misunderestimate the level of general poverty and wage stagnation that’s been inflicted on this country by our corporate overlords.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
@Southern Beale:
Then it stands to reason that Lewinski was Gingrich’s fault? Tiger’s girls were Phil Mickelson’s fault? Myra Brown was Sam Phillips’ fault? Somebody help me out with the logic here, it might come in handy some day.
RossInDetroit
I’ll never forget the first time that was driven home for me. A story about Obama’s Iraq troop drawdown plans. A NPR analyst noted that nobody gives GWB credit for drawing down the Iraq troop levels during his last term.
Cue me screaming at the radio that he sent those troops there on a whim in the first place and should get ‘credit’ for nothing but a bloody, disastrous war.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Bob Loblaw: So, probably roughly $43K per earner. Not exactly living high there. Most of the people I know – who aren’t living it up – make more than that by themselves, not including their spouse, though we’re not sweating.
kdaug
@someguy:
Cute. Try 4 more top income brackets. Let’s say, 500K, 1M, 10M, and 100M.
El Cid
Going after NPR and PBS funding wasn’t even new when it happened under Reagan.
This is completely unlike what’s happening today.
Who today would doubt the need for Africans to reject colonialism?
The reaction has always been for CBP / PBS / NPR to yield more and more to Republican attack.
dollared
@someguy: No, wrong comparison. Now add in their education level, and they are people who voluntarily make less than the median for their group. That’s what makes them important – they are the educated people who do not think life is about short term income maximization.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@someguy: Ugh. Yes. That’s shameful.
I consistently misunderestimate that. Funny, I don’t feel like a sunny optimist
Dan
If it means the end of “Wait, Wait- Don’t Tell me!” then I’m for it.
dollared
Doug, two divergent points: totebaggers do have to get to the barricades. They value things other than short term income maximization – they need to see the evil in Brooks. Thanks for doing that, and keep it up.
The point about NPR? Uncharacteristically thoughtless, and well, stupid. No federal funding? No NPR. No national network of state PRs. Period. That would be a disaster equivalent to the BBC dissolving and Murdoch taking ownership of the discourse in the UK.
We neeed NPR. Badly. What we need to do is keep the funding and take it back.
Svensker
@FlipYrWhig:
Um, you mean that doesn’t to everyone? Blushes. Looks around nervously. Oh.
Parallel 5ths (Jewish Steel)
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
@someguy:
But, let’t not mix up class and income. Correlated but not caused. (Would make a good tattoo)
something fabulous
@Bulworth: Ooooh! With the caption, “Totebag THIS.” !!!
CaffinatedOne
Well, NPR isn’t significantly funded directly regardless; Congress funds some of CBP which funds stations, though it’s mainly the small/rural ones that seem to rely on that for a significantly. So the main, direct, effect would be to close smaller/rural stations.
In terms of NPR, that’d cut into it’s revenue stream somewhat since it’d decrease the station programming fees that make up the largest single portion of it’s funding (~40%). I presume that it would require NPR to more heavily lean on corporate sponsorships to make up the difference, so that’d nicely push them further toward being another mouthpiece for the corporate/plutocratic agenda set. Of course, that’s the point.. to eliminate another force that could be used to oppose, or at least raise inconvenient questions to, the plutocrats.
Vanya
What is ironic is that the Board’s actions at compromise have only further inflamed and hardened the political divisions between Right and Left. If the Board had done nothing at all, the Right would have screamed for a bit, and then quickly forgotten Schiller the second the next outrage du jour comes along. Which they will still do. But now the brilliant minds at NPR have managed to turn the left against them as well. Well played there, guys.
CaffinatedOne
Well, NPR isn’t significantly funded directly regardless; Congress funds some of CBP which funds stations, though it’s mainly the small/rural ones that seem to rely on that for a significantly. So the main, direct, effect would be to close smaller/rural stations.
In terms of NPR, that’d cut into it’s revenue stream somewhat since it’d decrease the station programming fees that make up the largest single portion of it’s funding (~40%).
I presume that it would require NPR to more heavily lean on corporate sponsorships to make up the difference, so that’d nicely push them further along toward being another mouthpiece for the corporate/plutocratic agenda set. Of course, that’s the point; to make them more reliant on pleasing the corporations/plutocrats since they need their money and thus neuter another force that could be used to oppose, or at least raise inconvenient questions to, the plutocrats.
I fail to see how any of that could be classed as a “good thing”.
ThresherK
@Dan: Let’s lose the “never met a right-wing talking point we didn’t like” framing. But can we keep Roy, Paula and Moe?
(words of Newt Gingrich): “Voters don’t care about the 1990s. They are concerned about what leaders will do in the future.”
Roy Blount: “So, when are you leaving your next wife?”
As a Yankee I’m jealous of that singular Southern knack of saying something razor-sharp with a polite manner.
CaffinatedOne
Sorry for the double(ish) post, for some reason editing and deleting posts seems to do nothing in my browser for this site :( The last post is the one I intended.
batgirl
@FlipYrWhig: And notice the passive construction:
Newt didn’t actually control his penis, it just happenned.
batgirl
@someguy: Yes, I find this happens all the time with my very upper-middle class friends and family, the milieu I grew up in, whose lives are often cut off from the vast majority of Americans.
I know someone who obsesses about money, complains she can’t afford anything, and worries constantly about retirement. Her salary is way above that NPR median. However she works for a bunch of jackasses who have multiple homes and private plans. She has no clue that compared to most Americans she has it damn good.
I get so tired listening to her when day in and day out I work with people just struggling to pay the next bill, to find employment, to eat. I just helped someone fill out the application for food “stamps.” She was embarrassed. She doesn’t want to have to rely on government programs. She wants a job and has been working hard to find one. But as we have now learned, the longer you are out of the work, the less likely places are willing to even look at your resume.
I’d also like to point out that this woman was employed (like many of the people I help) until the banksters that this person works with blew up the economy. Yet, god forbid, they pay their fair share of taxes.
Ken J.
regarding Newt, I was always fond of this construction from 2008, when the leading Republican candidates were allegedly Gingrich, Giuliani and McCain, who together were “one wife short of a baseball team.”
Thymezone
Yeah, stop musing and hit the streets. From the blog that has provided stirring leadership in the area of street politics.
Can we say “Cindy Sheehan?” How much bandwidth was spent here on talking about how funny this American hero looked on tv and how much we hated her unphotogenic “demonstrations?”
Hell yeah, stop musing, and stop blogging, and hit the fucking streets.
Tonal Crow
I’ll contribute $1000/year to an independent NPR and add them to my will.
You?
Corner Stone
@debit: I’m liking the trendline your recent comments are following.
Midnight Marauder
@Thymezone:
A Cindy Sheehan reference? That is the best you can do?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@The Moar You Know:
Fixed.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Vanya:
Clearly they come from the Claire McCaskill School of Pissing Off Your Supporters.
MikeB
@dollared: No. IMO, defund NPR and bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Conservatives are
whining that their tax dollars are funding liberal propaganda, and that NPR shows
no respect for their opinions. Commercial stations, on the other hand,
use the so called “public airwaves” to disseminate corporate right wing
propaganda 24/7. This amounts to a government subsidy in the form
of broadcasting licenses with no requirement for content that serves to inform the
public at large, basically the same argument Tucker Carlson makes about funding NPR.
The larger issue, again IMO, is that the last decade has proven beyond a doubt that
what is good for business is not necessarily good for America. The public
supposedly owns the airwaves, but they are used primarily for the profit and
promotion of corporate interests. The Fairness Doctrine was a rather clunky
attempt to achieve some balance in informing the electorate, but the
government needs to start thinking in terms of the public good for a change.
The level of political ignorance in this country is appalling.
Elizabelle
Concur re The Fairness Doctrine.
alwhite
My guess is this will make NPR more beholden to the big money boys whos ads they run all the time. Their coverage has already become more cautious and conservative, this should cement the deal.
El Cid
@MikeB: No one will bring back the Fairness Doctrine. I don’t actually think it would have as great an effect as people might like — working on issues regarding the concentration of ownership and localized activity would probably do a great deal more — but in any case, I don’t see the Democratic party interested in doing so. Some individual Democrats, always. But not an agenda item.
Doug Hill
@Thymezone:
I go to rallies and the like fairly often. I gave never written about Cindy Sheehan.
mclaren
My oh my oh my oh my oh my.
When I suggested mass non-violent public demonstrations and a general strike throughout America four years ago, people called me “dangerous” and “scary” and “insane” and “demented” and “in need of therapy.”
My oh my…how times have changed.
RalfW
My annual drive across Nebraska reminds me how vulnerable state Public Radio networks are. Their daily goal is about what Minnesota Public Radio’s hourly goal is during pledge drive (and MN’s pledge is 5 or 6 days, NE still the standard two weeks).
I’m also more concerned about the creeping corporatism at NPR, and that won’t get better if the feds defund it.
debit
@Corner Stone: Well, I enjoy our conversations and look forward to many more, hopefully with a vigorous exchanging of ideas, many thrusting arguments and passionate ejaculations.
Elie
@RalfW:
I absolutely agree…
I have been hearing the “dwindle” of NPR for some time. Nothing short of some sort of class revolution (and I dont see that happening anytime soon) will save them in their current iteration.
Death to systems that cannot survive is not a bad thing. They take up resources and band width that perhaps could fund other things. Yes, in the short term, there is loss for the programs and information that they share with the public that are open and honest. The demand for that will have to drive the development of a better alternative.
I say, let it die.
Elie
@mclaren:
Yes, sadly so. Do you rejoice that such a time may be upon us?
THAT is sad. The only people who long for the extreme of revolution, are the idealists who do not care about the destruction and pain’s impact on the little guy.
Have you seen/read Marat Sade?
If so, you understand that it was not the so called sadist, Sade but Marat who advocated for death and destruction…
Absolutists always have all the answers. And their “widdle bwains” cannot perceive the pain or consequence beyond their own narcissistic frame. Its called “mind blindness”
Are you an Asperger’s?
JohnR
“NPR needs to realize there is no way to appease the Reichtards.”
Too bad they won’t, then. Same with the Democrats. It’s not like this is all a big secret, for God’s sake. Once the GOP realized how to turn Nixon’s loss into their game, and the Democrats decided that going long was the way to get along, it was pretty much all done. Control the media and you control the hearts-and-minds. I’m still hoping that the formalities will wait until I’m dead, but it’s happening faster and faster (as it always does, I suppose; then people always see “Nobody could have expected that”)
MikeB
@El Cid: I agree, FD was not effective and
was unwieldy at best. But some “fairness doctrine”-like policy needs to be
put in place, or perhaps the solutions you suggest.
Ah, whatever, we’re both dreaming. The politicians will never do anything that
might potentially harm the corporate media’s bottom line.
Dan
@ThresherK: Not happy about it, but I’m prepared to surrender them as collateral damage.
Doug Wieboldt
Actually, Brod er never lived… He was merely a dream of the Reich wing… We will not miss him, nor his passage… He was never deserving of notice. May he lie in an unremembered state forever… The coldest circle of hell is actually destined as his final resting place. Let us celebrate his passage.