Tag Archives: NPR

Political Rants

It ain’t broke.

Not that this is all that unusual, but I heard from various representatives of the Republican party and the “tea party” movement on NPR this morning. I really wonder why these right-wing types are so critical of NPR – the network is almost wholly devoted to providing them with outsized coverage. Every time they sneeze, Steve Inskeep is holding the rag. Sure, I listen to them regularly, because they have some good reporters, some good programs, and because they’re better than everything else on my upstate New York radio dial. But that’s a bit like voting for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Yeah, Barry’s a pretty lousy president; he’s just better by an order of magnitude than the object he was running against. Pretty low bar, frankly.

Low-bar radioWhat irks me, though, is the legitimization of truly extremist right-wing notions of governance (or lack of same) through what I’m sure NPR and other networks consider “balance coverage”. A brief example: yesterday there was a report on some research having to do with economic inequality and the degree to which people believe the federal government has an active role to play in addressing its effects. It was presented in the usual “this side thinks this, while the other thinks this” manner; specifically, 90% of Democrats believe the government should be involved in fighting inequality, while Republicans are evenly split. This was played as reinforcing the notion of a nation divided along party lines, but they buried the lead – by these percentages, it looks like a significant majority … maybe 60 -70% – agree that the government has an active role to play. Why the hell isn’t that the story?

The only reason why extremist tea party-type ideas significantly influence national policy is that they have an outsized voice in the national conversation. That’s why we are essentially cutting the long-term unemployed off at the knees, canceling their unemployment when there’s still three job seekers for every available job, slashing food stamps while cutting taxes on corporations and throwing more money at the Pentagon. Large numbers of unemployed people are a necessary component of capitalism – that keeps labor inexpensive and profits high. So to the free market fundamentalist, that system is not broken … it’s working just fine. And that is the point of view that will continue to drive the national conversation until, along with the tea party, Occupy Wall Street gets their own response to the State of the Union.

Color me disgusted.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Short memory

North Korea has unilaterally withdrawn from its 1953 ceasefire agreement with South Korea, cutting the emergency hotline between the two halves of this divided peninsula. The move has been roundly condemned as provocative and an indication of increasing cravenness on the part of third-generation great leader Kim Jong Un, whose government recently tested a nuclear device. As reported on NPR and other major news networks, this behavior is portrayed as almost innate, not rooted in anything other than blind aggression and dogmatic fealty to the North’s longstanding cult of personality and garrison state mentality.

All they know of us.
All they know of us.

Now, it is true that the North Korean state is an ossified, garrison state, very oppressive – a dungeon, even. I can’t defend it. But they didn’t arrive at this state of affairs without prompting. There is one thing they want: a non-aggression treaty with the United States. Because the war of 1950-53 was fought with the U.S. more than with South Korea, and that was a war of genocidal proportions, particularly for the North. The U.S. unleashed everything short of nuclear weapons on the North during that period, until no standing structures remained north of the 38th parallel. This after years of oppressive U.S. occupation of the southern half of Korea, which itself followed more than three decades of Japanese occupation.

When North Koreans talk about destruction, they know the meaning of the word. It is not an abstraction for them. After all, they share Poland’s great misfortune of being geographically located between two great powers, frequently at odds. Worse yet, they became ground zero of a growing cold war that was never hotter than it was during that three year period in the Korean peninsula. If they have nuclear weapons, it’s because they don’t want to be attacked. And if they take exception to the annual mock-invasion of the north conducted by Washington and Seoul, it is because they have a deep memory of the devastation of sixty years ago.

In America, we haven’t forgotten the Korean War so much as simply never known it in the first place, except for the dwindling number of veterans who fought there. It’s high time we stopped acting like an aggrieved empire and found a way to settle this conflict … before it explodes again.

luv u,

jp

Political Rants

Peace train.

My brother Matt was complaining about NPR today. I guess they were talking to one of the fifty generals they have on tap; a guy named General Mills. (“What the hell, does he command Cap’n Crunch?” said Matt.) We groused about this a bit for the podcast. NPR and PBS have always been heavily freighted with retired generals, like the commercial networks and cable channels. But because they have been erroneously described as “leftist” or somehow associated with an elusive liberal elite, they go overboard to disabuse people of that notion. They fired Soundprint’s Lisa Simeone for her association with Occupy DC, apparently fearing that her defense of the 99% would cloud her journalistic objectivity about opera, which is mostly what she covers. Call them National Paranoid Radio.

I’m thinking about NPR particularly because of the president’s declaration that the Iraq war will be drawn to a close at the end of this year, despite the administration’s efforts to keep it rolling for an indefinite period of deployment. NPR was completely on board with the Iraq war back in 2002-03; they dropped the ball on anything like investigative journalism at a time when it might have mattered to get the truth out. People tend to forget that the alternative press, plus outlets like the London Independent, blew holes in the Bush Administration’s case for war well before the shooting began. Counterpunch, for instance, knocked down Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation point by point within days of its delivery. Much of what they reported is common knowledge now. NPR – like other mainstream news sources – were nowhere on this.

Now that people are beginning to think of the Iraq war as a done deal, we would do well to remind ourselves that no one – absolutely no one – has been held accountable for this major bloodletting. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Condoleeza Rice have all barnstormed the country, hawking their memoirs, bragging on their participation in committing the crime of international aggression – the worst of all crimes, per the U.N. charter, since so many smaller crimes are precipitated by it. On the hook with them are some of the nation’s most august news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and, yes, NPR.

All I’m saying is, with respect to accountability for this historic crime we call the Iraq war, it’s not over until it’s over.

luv u,

jp