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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Family - Media Bias - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Not Livin’ Large in Ohio, Folks Can’t Even Afford Meat?

July 21, 2008 by 4 Comments

-By Warner Todd Huston

That’s it. NPR has declared Ohio a disaster area. Things are so bad. NPR gravely warns, that folks in the Buckeye state can’t even afford to buy meat for their dinner tables anymore. It’s the end of civilization as we know it. Doom and gloom. Oh the humanity. It’s the end of the world as we know it… at least for one Ohio family that NPR found to act as stand in for the rest of the state. To NPR all of Ohio is the Nunez family. And what is NPR’ solution? Government aid, of course.

In a segment of All Things Considered (well, all things but common sense, anyway), NPR gives us Gloria Nunez whose family, we are told, was “built on cars.” NPR gives us all sorts of sobbing, rending of clothes, wearing of sackcloth and gnashing of teeth for the Nunez’, of course. But even NPR can’t hide some of the glaring problems that Gloria and her family have surely brought upon themselves.

In fact, her story sounds like the scene in the old Blues Brothers movie where John Belushi is on his knees pleading with Carrie Fischer to forgive him. There was a flood, he whined, locusts came, it was the end of the world, it REALLY wasn’t his fault, he swore to God. Similarly we get the tale that Gloria Nunez’ car broke down, she can’t find a job, she had a car accident that left her “depressed and disabled, incapable of getting a job.” She is now somehow forced to live on a “$637 Social Security check and $102 in food stamps.” Naturally, none of it is her fault. All the seeds for the common welfare tale are there.

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00Publius Contributor - Democrats/Leftists - Media Bias - News - Security/Safety - Society/Culture - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Further Proof NPR Caters to Extreme Left

March 11, 2008 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Jennifer Harper, Washington Times reporter, gives us a revealing look at how far left our taxpayer funded National Public Radio network has gotten itself these days. Even when they try to go a little toward the conservative side of the debate, they get lambasted by their audience, angered that they had the temerity to air conservative views. Of course, the only reason they would get such a rude reception from their own audience is because they have garnered only a far left listenership as a result of their far left programming. After all, if they had a balanced listenership they wouldn’t get deluged by angry emails when they aired conservative content.

Apparently, at the end of February, the NPR program “Morning Edition” took the unusual move of airing four consecutive days of interviews with conservative thinkers in a segment they dubbed “Conversations with Conservatives.”

The roster consisted of the Rev. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform; talk-radio host Glenn Beck; and David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.

Each of these conservatives had their own focus, religion, taxes, and the like. But, as Harper discovered, “NPR listeners were not especially pleased in the aftermath of the broadcast segments.”

According to NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard, more than 60 angry e-mails and phone calls arrived at the network, calling the programming “shameful” and a “lovefest with radical, right-wing nuts.” There were only a few, she said, that praised the series as “refreshing” and “articulate,” among other things.

For his part, program host Steve Inskeep admitted he made a portion of his audience mad.

“We did annoy our listeners, but if we do our job right, we function as a personal intelligence agency for them. Hopefully, they hear allies and enemies and everybody in between. We have to learn from a wide range of people,” he said.

So, are we supposed to celebrate how brave NPR is for this decision to give us the “other side”?

And, who can doubt that he meant “opposition research” as opposed to learning from a “wide range of people”? After all, his audience only cares about conservative opinion as far as it alerts them to the opinion of the enemy and not because it will “help” them “learn” anything useful with which they can make a balanced decision of their own.

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