NPR's white noise

[NVMojo]

Published April 3, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

With a swift motion, I turned off the radio, silencing Click and Clack midway through a joke about Dodge Ramblers and their appeal to the fairer sex.

Why? I was pulling up to the drive-through window at my neighborhood McDonald's, and I didn't want the sister behind the counter to know I was listening to two cackling white guys on National Public Radio.

Let me explain: I'm a serious public radio fan. I live for Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me's geeky limericks on the week's news and the Magliozzi brothers' wisecracks about SUVs on Car Talk. I can even sit through an episode of Public Radio International's Prairie Home Companion, regarding Garrison Keillor's tales from the fictional Lake Wobegone like some anthropological excavation of rural, Caucasian Minnesota culture. Oh yah.

But there are times when I'm reluctant to let my public radio jones show - despite the Sirius Satellite Radio subscription that allows me access to three channels featuring NPR and PRI from the comfort of my driver's seat.

Why? Because public radio - especially NPR's signature shows - just feels too darn white.

more...


http://www.stpetersburgtimes.com/2005/04/03/Columns/NPR_s_white_noise.shtml

[tx_dem41]

1. I understand that their is an issue of NPR hosts/personalities....

..being non-representatively white, but I think the writer illustrates another serious issue. His claim that serious news, analysis, arts talk, etc. is seemingly a "white thing" is as disturbing as the color of the person delivering the news.

[NVMojo]

2. good catch ...that is a twist

[ixion]

3. This whole reverse racism thing that is apparently socially acceptable

disturbs me.

This is the second editorial in as many days that I've read that dogged something simply because there were 'white' people involved in it.

These same articles with one word change (from 'black' to 'white') would be considered racist garbage.

NPR is too 'white'? Please, spare me the racist remarks.

I wish the human species would just get over skin color. Really. It's a throwback from our cave dweller days, and we really ought to be able to move on.

[Botany]

4. You are an idiot ......

...... Quality is quality and it does not have a color. If Duke Ellington
was white would his music than be bad? Is hip hop good because it
is black?

Start seeing the world as the world and not as a world of blacks
and whites.

Except Jewish Polka Heavy Metal Music broadcast on PBS now that
sucks.

[Clark2008]

5. Jewish Polka Heavy Metal music?

:crazy:

Next, we'll have Arabic Alternative Country & Western.

:hi: Botany. How's Steph? :loveya:

[Botany]

6. I like Arabic Alternative C & W music!

I was a cowboy punk headed for my Haj in Mecca .......
when under a burkka I spotted my sweet Rebecca


Project Steph is going well. If you look at last nights KOEB
you can read I get face time w/ her May.

Stephanie :loveya: Miller

[Clark2008]

7. Well, it does have a nice beat and you can dance to it.

:7

And, I saw that last night.

Kind of concerned about your Rex Sean, though. :evilgrin:

[Botany]

8. Good thing we are keeping on the O.P.'s topic

LOL

Well Rex does mean King .... So would that be King Dong?

[Clark2008]

9. LOL. Well, we are keeping it kicked for the OP

"Rex" does mean "king," but does "Sean" mean "dong?"

You could call it a Rex Danish Oil and Natural Gas. :silly:

[Botany]

10. Just because we are nice. We are keeping this kicked.

:bounce:


No goofing around here

[maxsolomon]

11. already exists

"Rock the Casbah", anyone?

the Shareef don't like it!

[Clark2008]

12. You're going to laugh, but my former brother-in-law

who is Arabic (from Jordan) LOVES (old-fashioned) Country & Western music.
I just think it's cute to listen to him sing, "He stopped loving her today..." with his little Arabic/proper King's English accent. :7

[maxsolomon]

13. this has more to do with af-am male culture than NPR

if you have to be "hard" all the time you're not allowed to like geeky stuff like NPR on the weekends.

got to keep it real.

[Logansquare]

14. There's an interesting thread in AA Group

on "Acting White," and the cultural pressures that AA intellectuals are subjected to in addition to the stress of racism.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=258&topic_id=288&mesg_id=288

That being said, NPR could use some more diversity. They used to have Elvis Mitchell on to do film reviews, although I hear he's dropped out of the review business.

One thing I have to say about Garrison Keillor: he proved that even white people have a unique culture. You can't make fun of a culture unless it exists. It was the first place outside of my church that I heard the term "Hot Dish."

[thebigidea]

15. pretty pathetic...

... to worry about what a McDonald's teller thinks of your radio preferences.

I better run my music choices through a GAP salesperson, wouldn't want to risk anything.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. Now that you mention it, yes, it is odd that he cares

what the McDonald's drive through person thinks of his radio choices. Or thinks that the McDonald's person even notices what the customers have on the radio.

[dsc]

17. He might be a teacher

and have students working at the McDonalds. I have met more than a few of my students at a drive through window.

[thebigidea]

18. so you should be worried that possible students know you listen to NPR?

seems a bit of a ridiculous premise to base this article on...

[dsc]

20. I wouldn't be

but they alreadly know I am into classical music and other snooty things. If I were pretending to be into rap and hip hop I might though. I can relate to not wanting to have a hard to explain personal situation come up in that regard though. I wouldn't take a date to an after movie drive through at Mcee Dees.

[KG]

19. this is my local paper. even though he has a point about NPR,

eric deggens is dumbshit. i don't even read his lame crap anymore.