Friday, March 16, 2007

Open Thread - Friday

NPR related comments welcomed.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wed ( I know this is old) on ATC was a piece about some stupid 'spiritual' award, of over $1million to some christian guy, from some organisation that I'm sure was misrepresented as legitimate by NPR. So NPR was completely down with this guy's utterances that agnostics and athiests were intolerant, whereas devoutly religious people were open-minded. The whole point of the piece, as with much of the sub-text of NPR is that if you are not a sheep, there is something missing in your life.
And the same thing was evident in TotN on Thursday, where the program was a drool-fest over families whose loved ones had been killed in Iraq. Interspersed with the obligatory plattitudes of 'serve the county' and 'fight for our freedoms' was the unquestionig correctness of voluntarily obliterating a society which posed no harm to us. The puke line was from some fater who's poor son was sacrificed so that 'we won't have to fight any more wars'. Cindy Sheehan? Lieutenant Watada? They have ideas about how to avoid wars. Not so with NPR. Again, the listener was left to feel somewhat lacking if they didn't participate blindly in this carnage-fest. All aboard the NPR death-train.

Mytwords said...

Yes, I caught Robert Siegel's interview with Charles Taylor and was bummed out too. I actually thought Siegel asked him a pretty good question about whether or not religious orthodoxy doesn't necessarily imply intolerance, but let the guy off with his slur on unbelievers as being the most intolerant and ignorant! I was bummed because though an atheist myself I'm actually respectful of people who take the ethical commands of their religious beliefs seriously.

I also was stunned at how stupid Taylor came off talking about the hypocrisy of politicians regarding religion--he was attacking the hypocrisy of claiming to be a believer when one is not (a rare case I would assert) and not the abundant hypocrisy of all these Christian politicians who worship violence and greed in complete contradiction to the faith they claim!

Oh and regarding the warrior-worship of NPR, it is disgusting, except for their recent coverage of veteran abuse which I think is pretty good journalism for NPR.