Tag: NPR

What Can’t Be Allowed

Today’s installment of What Greenwald Said:

The double standard in our political discourse – which tolerates and even encourages anti-Muslim bigotry while stigmatizing other forms – has been as beneficial as it has been glaring. NPR’s firing of Juan Williams threatened to change that by rendering this bigotry as toxic and stigmatized as other types. That could not be allowed, which is why the backlash against NPR was so rapid, intense and widespread.

Read the whole thing.

What Can’t Be Allowed

It’s not about race. It’s also not about free speech, as some have charged. Nor is it about an alleged attempt by NPR to stifle conservative views.

NPR Ombudsman Alicia Shepard on firing Juan Williams. FOXnews supporters seem to have forgotten that his role was as the token liberal over there; how in the hell could his viewpoint be legitimately considered one of stifled conservatism? And NPR seems to have no idea whatsoever re: his position within their organization. Was he a conservative analyst? Apparently not. He was supposed to be a leading voice of the view from nowhere. This “explanation” only serves to make me wonder if anybody ever listened to what he said. Unbelievable.
Likewise, can we clarify for once and for all that freedom of speech applies to your freedom to state an opinion, and not freedom from the implications and outcomes of stating that opinion? One would think this goes without saying, but I have yet to see a MSM outlet reporting anything approaching a baseline understanding of this.
But, by all means, no reason to point at the Rodeo Clown.

Tumble DC 25: Receipt

MY CONTRIBUTION IS A: First membership contribution

AMOUNT: $25.00

MEMBERSHIP THANK-YOU GIFTS:
None selected.

Related, comments from one James_Gary on Yglesias’ Juan Williams ruminations are on point:

Hopefully NPR will get the clue here and do something similar on their next pledge drive: “…if we get $1 million in the next hour, we promise to sack Cokie Roberts and the entire simpering-Republican crew of Planet Money!” […] Every time I hear a Planet Money commenter on NPR, I feel like I’m listening to a completely earnest version of John Hodgman’s “expert” from The Daily Show– pompously condescending and, if not actually wrong, then misleadingly simplistic to the point of stupidity.

Either one of those offers tied to such a guarantee would net $100 from me. Instantly.

Tumble DC 25: Receipt

Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

Juan Williams, getting himself fired from NPR. You’d think by now that anyone leading a sentence with “I’m not a bigot, but…” would have the sense to pause and reflect.
The sad part is that he’s said worse things than this on NPR. That they have enabled him, for years, to parrot right wing talking points in the guise of “analysis” on NPR, and then to turn around an paint a patina of “the reasonable liberal” on any bit of trash that FOXnews wants to peddle, more or less borders on an unforgivable act for what claims to be a serious news organization. All they did was make him quit identifying himself as an NPR analyst while on FOXnews; instead, they should have fired his ass years ago.
Never fear, though, we’ll always have Cokie “It’s out there” Roberts to fill in the void in our “this is bad for the Democrats” lives.

Memo to Code Brown 2: Judgement Day

Scott Brown, local imbecile, said through a spokesman yesterday that:

If the Democrats try to ram their health-care bill through Congress using reconciliation, they are sending a dangerous signal to the American people that they will stop at nothing to raise our taxes, increase premiums and slash Medicare. Using the nuclear option damages the concept of representative leadership and represents more of the politics-as-usual that voters have repeatedly rejected.

The problem is that using reconciliation is neither “the nuclear option” (that’d be this, a technique both invented and brandished by one Grand Old Party) nor is the use of said reconciliation in any way unprecedented, either in terms of budgetary measures (precisely the reason the damned thing was created in the first place) or healthcare reforms (which often are entirely or nearly entirely budgetary issues). NPR provides us with a partial listing of the many uses of reconciliation in recent years:

  1. 1982 — TEFRA: The Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act first opened Medicare to HMOs

  2. 1986 — COBRA: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act allowed people who were laid off to keep their health coverage, and stopped hospitals from dumping ER patients unable to pay for their care

  3. 1987 — OBRA ‘87: Added nursing home protection rules to Medicare and Medicaid, created no-fault vaccine injury compensation program

  4. 1989 — OBRA ’89: Overhauled doctor payment system for Medicare, created new federal agency on research and quality of care

  5. 1990 — OBRA ’90: Added cancer screenings to Medicare, required providers to notify patients about advance directives and living wills, expanded Medicaid to all kids living below poverty level, required drug companies to provide discounts to Medicaid

  6. 1993 — OBRA ’93: created federal vaccine funding for all children

  7. 1996 — Welfare Reform: Separated Medicaid from welfare

  8. 1997 — BBA: The Balanced Budget Act created the state-federal childrens’ health program called CHIP

  9. 2005 — DRA: The Deficit Reduction Act reduced Medicaid spending, allowed parents of disabled children to buy into Medicaid

Conveniently left off that list are several that are specifically damaging to the GOP’s case for grievance here. Like both of the Bush tax cuts. Reconciliation. Additional oil drilling courtesy of W. Reconciliation. Medicare Part D (aka W Bush’s unfunded cost explosion). Reconciliation. Various W trade authorities. Reconciliation. And, of course, there’s this hypocrisy that’s never mentioned by the MSM:

the very senators who speak reverentially of the filibuster now, voted for reconciliation then. Judd Gregg, in fact, voted for reconciliation every time it was used in the Bush era.

Grey Medal

NPR nails it:

The basic problem with NBC’s coverage is that they haven’t improved the fundamentals of the coverage in spite of massive changes in the way people take in content. The prime-time coverage is largely as it’s always been: a few events (including figure skating) are heavily showcased, a few other events (most skiing and speed skating fall into this category) are usually shown in an abbreviated format regular viewers instantly recognize as “USA-Plus” (meaning you see the Americans, plus a few other people who are relevant because they either do very well or wipe out spectacularly), and two events – hockey and curling – are shown as complete events, but they’re shoved off to cable.

Yep. They grew addicted to doing it this way when the Olympics were held on the other side of the world…all the events are happening at crazy hours relative to US television schedule so the delay-and-repackage thing feels less blatantly false…and but so why bother to change anything when the games are inconveniently held right in our neighborhood?

This goes to NBC’s entire approach to television of late: when in doubt, fall back on the old ways, the old models. Ride them to the bitter end and, probably, for a few years beyond the end. If an incremental change proves insufficient, retreat back to the older thing.
And this has always been their approach to the Olympics. They have three networks ostensibly available to them to broadcast the games and yet still manage to show a vanishingly small fraction of the actual sporting events. As NPR notes, complete games/events coverage is limited to some hockey and curling matches. Period. Add in more or less complete coverage of opening and closing ceremonies and you’ve got a “complete” events list that numbers four covering an event spanning two weeks. Unless, of course, you count the skating; there you get USA-first style coverage, with the Americans, the ultimate winners if they don’t happen to be ‘Merican, and one or two nobly failing foreigners to pad out the necessary space for commercials.
This is indefensible. Does the West Coast typically have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of an East Coast Superbowl? Or, even more to the point, does the West Coast have to wait three hours to watch a highlights package of a Superbowl played in Los Angeles? Would that seem a reasonable approach for the TV production of that game? The Olympics are no different. Or shouldn’t be.
Last night, rather than show something, anything actually sports-related on the main prime-time broadcast, they spent an entire segment chatting with…swimmer Michael Phelps, who won’t be seeing any Olympic action for another two years. Clearly it was critical to get his thoughts in place of covering the actual games going on that day. Likewise the interminable recaps of whatever figure skating outrage is queued up for the day.

I’d wager that most people are past ready to dispense with the old model of tape delayed spoon feeding and endlessly narcissistic “Up close and personal” side stories that only serve to distract from whatever it is that’s going on in the first place. Such a broadcast could be accomplished with far fewer individuals on the payroll, and without weeks of run-up production time and the expense of same. Just place some cameras, hire some operators, and have a bit of talent stationed around to interpret where necessary. Honestly, it’s in your financial interest and that of your shareholders to run off as cheap a broadcast as you possibly can. Actually broadcasting Olympic sporting events is just how you do that.

I, for one, would pay to see it done that way.