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"Public" Radio

The back and forth about so-called "public radio (ETS! 3/31, etc.) is an irresistibly inviting lagoon into which I must jump with a few random things.

--Terry Gross is known to many as Gross Terry. Although a talented interviewer (as we are continually told), her Fresh Air show is nothing but an hour-long commercial ... a non-critical love-fest with major corporate entertainment figures. The public is invited to help subsidize this business promotion in pledge drives even though the public already paid for it by way of taxes. Every Gross show is a theft of millions of dollars of public money that the businesses save in PR costs. Once in a while there are some remarkable guests, but these seem to be crumbs tossed to the Left that, conveniently, create the impression that public broadcasting is balanced ... but it is only done as long as it is not effective. It makes the Left seem to be a tiny, almost irrelevant part of the Public. Fresh Air is an insult in that (at least as it's aired in Philadelphia) it pops up with its sort of upper-class People Magazine right between Ray Suarez and All Things Considered where we hear the NPR/establishment spin on all sorts of death and destruction. Yet here's Terry chatting lovingly with some "in" musician or movie star or whatnot. In Philadelphia we get the SAME show repeated a mere two hours later! No Alternative Radio or anything remotely similar allowed on our NPR outlet.

--Ray Suarez/Talk of the Nation: Once in a while a really great caller will get on the air and tell it like it is...the reply from some White House PR person will follow...and then on to the rest of the show with no chance for the caller to respond to the rehearsed-sounding Official Position. Like the Gross show, the progressive/Left things allowed on TOTN let NPR say that they don't censor the other side. But again...it's as little as possible (the classic Jack Nicholson line from Chinatown) and as long as it is not effective.

--Click and Clack: OK, they're funny and quick and automotively expert. But, consider: they make cars, and therefore the entire oil, highway, sprawl, public-transportation-free system seem like FUN. Their jokey criticisms of some cars is like David Letterman's jibes at G.E. when he was on that network. The Corporate folks are made to seem like swell, good-natured, Regular Guys like you and I who can take a little ribbing. The Oil and Highway etc. industries are NOT Regular Guys. They are inanimate vacuum cleaners of all the money they can get no matter what deaths, disease, injuries, environmental destruction or cost to the public may result along the way. Not so funny.

--Interesting to hear that your KUOW yanked Pacifica News. Same thing happened in Philadelphia at Temple University's public radio station, WRTI. It happened here over a year ago in a surprise cancellation that happened one minute before Pacifica was going to play tapes from Mumia Abu-Jamal. Even the radio staff wasn't informed. Dead air for about five minutes...and then music...jazz. The music that came out of Black U.S. History and the Black experience was used to drown out the words of one of the most eloquent Black voices...and in the very city that is the center of his story.

Pacifica's Amy Goodman pointed out at the time that playing nice music to cover atrocities has a precedent...in the Third Reich...an eerie similarity that did not embarrass or dissuade local officials a bit.

Basically, NPR's mission is to send the message that if the wonderful, smart, hip, and fun folks on the air don't care about dead Iraqi children, pesticides in food, genetic crop alterations, torture and rape in prison, creeping fundamentalism, corporate corruption of government and public communications, unsafe drugs, and all the rest ... then we shouldn't care either. Everything must be just fine. Look at that Dow Jones climb!

It is arguably the case that NPR is WORSE than the blatantly corporate media because it pretends to be what it is not. It should be postal fraud to send solicitations for money through the mail with the lie that it is public. One can't be partly public any more than one can be partly pregnant. NPR's Sheep's Clothing makes it more effectively dangerous than the obviously self-serving and more easily dismissed commercial wolves...

John Jonik, Philadelphia, PA

Reptiles Reply!

Sincerely, --Alfred E. Gator, Chair, Reptile Anti-Defamation League, 3rd Stump South of the Cypress Stand, Everglades, Florida

G.P. replies: Mr. Gator is quite correct. My most sincere and full apologies to all reptiles. Birds, too, for that matter.

God Help Us All

I really love the looks of that bumper sticker. Last year before the primaries the idea flashed in my mind but I never got around to writing you about it. Maria is one of the most well-informed, ERUDITE, TRULY FIERY, and CARING writers in America at this time (Geov is another, but it would be so nice to have a woman beat Skeletor). If this happened, I think it would be a great political education event. Even winning isn't beyond belief at all. I'd be willing to donate $25 per month for every month the campaign is official. Think about it. It would be a lot nicer than having to worry about whether some Demo politician will have the guts to take a stand on important issues instead of being "pragmatic"--whatever the hell that means.

Thanks for your time.

--Bob Doublin, via e-mail

P.S. I feel like doing public penance because back in my younger days in the 70's when I hadn't lived much in the real world I was a gung ho Libertarian working to get big bad government off the backs of "hardworking" businessmen. To really understand their opposition to environmental laws one must keep in mind not just their greed involved in current types of businesses but also the fact that they really believe the market will "solve" problems like scarce drinking water or fresh air once such things become profitable market commodities. The last thing they want is for anything to be done to keep these things abundant and therefore free. They're just lusting over the possibilities of making billions supplying these things to eager consumers. The selling of a minute's worth of oxygen in smoggy Tokyo or the recent popularity of designer bottled water with yuppies is just the tip of the iceberg of what these assholes dream of. We need to keep the full picture in mind in order to really understand what we're up against. They won't stop until they actualize the complete commodification of the natural world.