The letter fired off to NPR after a Saturday Weekend Edition radio piece caused sudden gastric distress.
Dear NPR –
I almost threw up listening to Scott Simon’s embarrassing puffball conversation with glib freshman House member Bill Huizenga.
The House of Representatives is now one of the most unpopular institutions in the country, and in large part due to the freshmen republican class and the inflexible, extreme ideological values that Mr Huizenga represents.
I’m not alone in this view. According to a new survey by Pew Research, “Half of all Americans say the current Congress has accomplished less than others, and 40 percent say Republican leaders are to blame, while just 23 percent of those polled say Democratic leaders are responsible.”
While Mr Huizenga may think he’s doing a great job, the American people do not. According to the poll,
“53 percent, see the GOP as the more extreme of the two parties, as well as the party that is less honest and ethical and less willing to work with the other side”
So it is particularly nauseating to have to sit thru 5 minutes of unanswered nonsense from the party that is doing its best to keep anything, from a trillion dollar spending bill, to the simplest judicial appointment, or even road repair – from happening in government – as long as a progressive with black skin and a funny name is in the white house.
I’m used to this kind of one sided blather from Fox and Friends, not NPR. But an earlier news item shed some light on Mr Simon’s gabfest.
One of the pet projects of the Tea Party congress is to completely defund NPR, leaving the country without even the shreds of the once great journalistic enterprise that all Americans could be proud of – and completely at the mercy of the Fox News/talk radio axis that has been creating the alternative universe that Mr Huizinga lives in – the one where WMDs, Death Panels, and Kenyan birth certificates are real, and, for instance, climate change, is not.
This build-your-own reality approach of the Fox News fueled Tea Party zealots is in large part what has so divided the nation – which can no longer even agree on a common set of objective facts. NPR is supposed to be a remedy to this – that is exactly why they hate it so passionately.
Mr Simons fauning interview smacked more of Stockholm syndrome than journalism.
Can we please not do this again?
Amen brother. Scott is not the best interviewer at NPR, but even this was pathetic by his standards.
…it’s why we call it National Petroleum Radio.
“Mr Simons fauning interview smacked more of Stockholm syndrome than journalism.”
Epic closer to an epic letter Greenman. I won’t try and upstage it with a reference to Neville Chamberlain.
I’d like to see any followups to this.
will advise
Epic closer indeed. Ouch.
Just read this and a late responding. I woke up after sleeping a little late on Saturday to hear the interview. I agree completely–not one challenge, not even a mildly skeptical response from Scott. I began talking back to the radio–a bad sign.
Scott writes and reads sanctimonious and often irrelevant little commentaries on his show. I wish he would stop doing those. However, it would be a service to his listeners if he were to write a reflection on his own utter and complete failure challenge in any way Huizenga’s false-ridiculously false–assertion that the primary problem in this Congress is a do-nothing Senate. This week’s fiasco in the House is a case in point.
Keep up the good work Greenman.
gotta say I kinda hate the pretentious little essays too.