As I was driving around yesterday evening doing some errands with NPR on, as I am wont to do (please don’t hold it against me), a piece came on about songs that remind people of winter. Last summer NPR’s All Things Considered did a series on songs that remind people of summer and decided to do the same for winter. You know, the kind of songs that flood your mind with warm memories of another time. They pick a person, who may be well known or not, and ask them what their favorite winter song is.
This is the title of a piece by Howard Kurtz in Newsweek. This is a very strange title to a piece that says the following: But with its future on the line, NPR’s decimated management has opted for quiet diplomacy rather than a full-throated defense of one of the few news operations that is actually expanding, reaching an impressive 27 million listeners a week. For some reason unknown to the rest of the world, NPR’s future is “on the line” because the 10 to 15% of its budget that comes from our tax dollars is being threatened by congressional Republicans. I’m not going to address the money issue, but it’s absurd to think “public broadcasting” can’t survive without these funds. I’m more interested in what I’ve heard coming from NPR these last two weeks. It’s been kind of comical to hear NPR reporters and anchors lament that for some crazy reason conservatives see NPR as biased to the left. I heard Ira Glass, the host of the popular NPR staple “This American Life,” venting his frustration on another NPR show, “On the Media” last week at the wimpy defense NPR management is making of its journalistic integrity. He couldn’t fathom why
by Mike Gray On Pajamas Media, Gary Wickert has uncovered yet more examples of PC enforcement. The firing of Juan Williams from NPR is simply the latest and highest profile case: Political correctness seems harmless enough at first glance. After all, it simply seeks to avoid offending certain segments of our society, right? It is seemingly just a few innocent code words: tolerance, social justice, economic justice, peace, reproductive rights, sex education and safe sex, safe schools, inclusion, diversity, and sensitivity. While I have no doubt that many liberals genuinely think policing our words and thoughts helps lift society in some well-intentioned way, the origins of political correctness acutely reveal that it is actually a powerful tool for those wishing to divide our country and destroy the America we know. According to Wickert, through a cruel twist of history we have Hitler and his thugs to thank for the entrenchment of PC thinking in America: In 1923, followers of György Lukács and other Marxists joined forces with the Communist Party of Germany to establish the Institute of Social Research in Frankfurt. When the Nazis came to power in Germany, the members of the Frankfurt School fled. Most came to the
Instructing young American males in the basics means more than getting back to reading, writing and arithmetic. At least it that’s what the U.S. Army is finding as it attempts to prepare recruits to defend American interests. Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon about preparing young men, who spend far too much time sitting around on their ‘assets’ playing Medal of Honor or Call of Duty, for the rigors of combat. The U.S. Army is overhauling its basic training program for the first time in 30 years. The military says the change is necessary to keep pace with the new realities of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that’s not the only reason. Part of the shift is intended to train a new generation of soldiers whose experience with fighting is usually limited to video games. All that gaming might prepare young men to handle the joystick of an unmanned drone, but even a simple walking stick seems beyond the grasp some recruits. According to Gen. Hertling, “We are seeing a decline across the board in America. This isn’t a decline in our recruits; this is a decline in our American society in terms of their physical
On its surface NPR provides what appears as a fairly balanced report about Andrew Breitbart. The story’s sucker punch however comes in the final paragraph, and I doubt the reporter even knew he was throwing it. I will acknowledge that the reporter is fair for most of the story. He has some good quotes from Breitbart and Instapundit blogger and U. of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds. These are balanced with comments from New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt. In the end, however, the reporter’s bias slips through when he ties what Breitbart does to James O’Keefe with: A New Kind Of Journalism says, and O’Keefe says, they are performing a new kind of journalism. … reporters at other outlets have repeatedly questioned O’Keefe’s tactics: the deception; the editing choices in the ACORN videos. This comes after spending several paragraphs describing the activity for which O’Keefe was arrested. The point isn’t subtle at all. Breitbart and O’Keefe “are perfoming a new kind of journalism.” O’Keefe’s “new kind of jourlanism” requires “tactics” questioned by “reporters at other outlets” and includes breaking the law. Therefore, Breitbart is paired with unscrupulous tactics that including breaking the law in order to
Recent Comments