Stop Me Before I Vote Again

David Brooks says Haiti needs "intrusive paternalism."

We need "to replace parts of the local culture with a highly demanding, highly intensive culture of achievement — involving everything from new child-rearing practices to stricter schools to better job performance," says this wise man.

Does that sound like Cass Sunstein, who wants to trick us into thinking the way he wants us to think?

There seems to be a surfeit of folks at the top of the economic/political ladder who think they're so far superior to us poor, unwashed masses that they actually are doing us a favor by manipulating our behavior.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

But of course, Ms. Kay. Merely reading the names of my betters, like the erudite Brooks, Sunstein, Obama, et. al. is enough to have me tugging my forelock, gaze averted in entirely appropriate shame at my bad behavior and incorrect thoughts. Life is much simpler this way.

(PS: I also favor making them accountable. I prefer the accountability of heads hoist on poles, not withstanding all the wet, sticky mess it entails.)

Not for the first time, it occurred to me that the job of liberal media like NPR is precisely to patrol the outer limits of permissible discourse.

Patterns of behavior are a better indicator of motive than professions of intent. Calling an entity "public" and saying its programming is funded by "viewers like you" doesn't eliminate the taint of the programming.

I've never seen anything on PBS, nor heard anything on NPR, which questioned much of the Great Myth as propagated by public schooling... you know, the parts where we hide giving smallpox-laden blankets to the aboriginals, where we encourage "manifest destiny," where we obscure the impact of capitalism on natural resources, where we never legitimately analyze programs which tend to socialize more services, where the crimes of the business class are never discussed....

PBS and NPR provide a picture frame... literally in the case of PBS, figuratively (framed by the psychological sense of a virtual amphitheatre or more accurately, intimate cozy warm living room with a going fire and a pot of herbal tea) in the case of NPR ...for what is reality in America, to an "enlightened" American. That "reality" is a purposeful construct, designed to encourage people to imagine themselves a notch higher on the social ladder for "helping" a "public" resource like NPR / PBS, and that "helping" gives a real motive to NOT question what's purveyed via the "public" resource's broadcasting.

I can recall the point in my adolescence where I discovered public broadcasting and I thought it was more interesting initially because the DJs talked like people rather than DJ stereotypes (Carlin's "Scott Lame" comes to mind). But the tranquilizing delivery has a creepy psychological spin to it, and I don't like that one bit, so my interest in "public" broadcasting was very short-lived.

Sometimes, if the DW and I are in the car headed someplace in the early evening, she'll insist on inflicting ten or fifteen minutes of All Things Considered on me and, at the slightest eye-rolling from me, she gets all pissy and says something like "oh, what's your problem -- afraid you might learn something?" -- to which I reply "oh, I learn plenty from NPR -- I learn that NPR is a big, fat, phony-assed corporate liberal mouthpiece!", at which point World War IV starts... and, as you can imagine, a full nuclear exchange between the front seats of a Solara is not pretty. Still, at least ATC isn't nearly as bad as Prairie Home Companion. Jeezus H., man, who the hell is listening to that goddamn' show, anyway? How does it stay on the air? I've been on conference calls more exciting than Prairie Home Companion. Garrison Keillor puts me into a goddamn' coma, man.

Oh, and did I neglect to mention This American Life? That's probably the only thing NPR has that's anywhere nearly as dull and banal as PHC. I always found it interesting that none of the "American Lives" I've heard featured are the lives of poor or working-class people, or of black families who've lost sons to the prison system or police violence, or anyone else but white college yuppies. Seriously, if truth-in-labeling laws applied to radio shows, they'd have to retitle that program This Affluent White Liberal American Life.

Still, I'll have to admit that my first impression of PBS -- back in my high school days -- was a positive one, owing to the local PBS channel (WETA, channel 26 in DC) being the channel that gave my eagerly-craved Sunday night hour of Monty Python, back in the early '70s, when Monty Python was something known only to all the truly hardcore "hip" kids in school. I also dug James Burke's History of the Universe and, needless to say, I never missed an episode of Cosmos or their '80s documentary miniseries Spaceflight as I've always been a real "space cadet". I do, however, want to find out where Ken Burns lives so I can go over to his house and gouge his eyes out with a spoon so that he can never film another documentary ever again. I'm truly amazed at his talent for taking truly interesting and compelling topics and making them duller than dirt -- over the space of a week, in episodes of four hours each.

I'll also confess to having had a bit of a soft spot for NPR back in the mid'80s through early '90s, when the DC NPR affiliate used to carry the satellite broadcast of the Grateful Dead's New Year's Eve show, live from San Francisco, giving my buds and I a perfectly ready-made instant New Year's Eve party (just add beer and weed). Despite NPR's annoying-assed predeliction for presenting various styles of popular music -- be it R'n'B, '60s rock and pop, or jazz -- as if they were a million-year-old fly preserved in amber, at least I could count on being able to tape a Grateful Dead show in crystal-clear, perfectly-mixed FM stereo on New Year's Eve, even as NPR presented it as if it were an old Texaco Star opera broadcast.

Still in all, as far as "voices" go, NPR had the exact opposite effect on me than it did on Mr. Oxtrot -- I was annoyed and somehow vaguely offended by the announcers and newsreaders on NPR seemingly talking down to me in that perfectly-modulated pompous liberal intellectual tone all the time.

Now, as far as DJs who talked like normal people, nothing could top the late great WGTB-FM out of Georgetown University in the mid to late '70s, where the DJs' voices always sounded like my stoner buddies from school, except slightly -- but only slightly -- more polished for radio.

And don't even get me started on the "Viewers Like You" phrase they beat to death on PBS, quite possibly the most unctious, condescending words ever uttered by an announcer on that goddamn' network. Yeah, that's right, pro-state and pro-corporate propaganda presented thanks to Viewers Like Me. Every time I hear that phrase spoken at the end of a PBS program, it makes me want to borrow my wife's car for the quick trip down Mass Ave to dynamite the goddamn' PBS building.

>>I prefer the accountability of heads hoist on poles

It's sounding more and more attractive.

Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Mike -- Yeah DC had some good freeform radio during my teenage years and my 20s. WHFS, WAMU, WGTB. The original freeform WHFS was great, I remember the days when the only commercial they ran was for the employment entity called Career Connections, back when they were down the block from Sunshine House surf shop in B-town. I remember each DJ having his or her own intro and outro theme music, and each program had a little different flavor.

That sort of radio is great. Imagine the whole spectrum of radio being as individually flavored!

WFMU in NJ is another great freeform radio station. http://www.wfmu.org/

By the way... the response I had to "public" broadcasting changed as I grew older and more experienced in the various types of confidence scams worked in America. Eventually my response was one of disgust, because of that very superior, condescending quality to NPR and PBS programming. I mean, don't even get me started on The Charlie Rose Show, where he's a cheerleader and not an incisive interrogator, but the folksy manner and genteel deference is supposed to convey detached respect, not sycophancy.

To understand PBS one only need sample a pledge drive ("Festival") ... Sinatra concerts from 35 years ago, talks to a selected audience by stage-roaming lecturers on topics for geriatrics, etc.

Ever since PBS was essentially defunded by Congress, survival has meant flattering an audience not challenging it. This is a commercial broadcasting model. But since the audience is literally dying off, some of the programming attempts to help the audience survive a few more years (to pledge) (not a bad thing, survival). The 'viewers like you' is quite an honest description of those who do pledge.

The proud claim that the stations are supported mostly by contributions rather than public funds identifies the audience's 'Weltanschauung' and implies a promise that there will be no challenge to it in the programming.

Mildly amusing reminiscence: Right after Clinton(s) came to office I noticed that even slightly coarse speech in BBC reruns (about 30% of evening programming) was being bleeped. I called and complained about nanny state procedures. "You want to hear more swearing?", said befuddled telephone answering person. But bleeping continued. (I don't recall if Macneil-Lehrer was bleeped during later reports about Clinton's sexual incontinence.)

Less amusing: About 15 years ago the local affiliate announced and began showing "The Politics of Hunger" narrated by Martin Sheen and detailing how US policy under the influence of ADM, Cargill, etc. was promoting starvation around the globe. Transmitter went dead about 30 minutes in. I called the station and was given by mistake the number of the transmitter site. I called and spoke to a technician who could only express outrage that a member of the public had been given the phone number of the transmitter site.

So what ever happened to Ben Kinchlow?

"I do, however, want to find out where Ken Burns lives so I can go over to his house and gouge his eyes out with a spoon so that he can never film another documentary ever again"

i hear he's been working on one
called
haiti " curse of the carribean "
for over a year now floogie

talk about timing

The great Chris Floyd gives a little background

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1900-help-haiti-the-unforgiven-country-cries-out.html

Am I going to be drummed out of the corps for admitting that I do listen to Prairie Home Companion once in a while? [shrug]

If it makes you feel any better, I closed my wallet to OPB even longer ago than I closed it to Democrats. But honestly, going back to work at least for a couple of months and being barraged with the more "capital-C" commercial radio out there-- [weeps on keyboard]

Holy fucking shit: what a festering pile! The same mediocre fifteen popular songs by well-connected White boys over and over again, punctuated by screaming hucksters for a whole lot of crap that nobody in their right mind wants every twenty minutes or so, simpering gossip about "famous people" that I either never heard of or managed to forget about until now... Also would-be cutting-edge wits making lots of jokes about drug-addicted Hispanic "Trannies" when what I hope is just an actor playing same calls into the station to talk.

Y'know... after forty hours of having that shit forced into one's skull nonstop (at a volume that should violate OSHA safety regs but probably doesn't), a little OPB doesn't seem so bad.

I just turn it down when the "news" comes on.