There is a really stupid conversation taking place right at this moment on NPR. It's about the link between Obama's leadership skills and his being a pick-up basketball player. The guest on the show even claimed that Michelle Obama decided to date Barack after he played a pick-up game with her brother.
I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. An odd courtship maneuver. And there are many stories about how Michelle made Barack jump through hoops to get her affection. Had to get a better apartment, job and haircut. No wonder he is president, she never got off his ass. But I kid the Obamas, they love me.
Stevie Wonder claims responsibility for helping get their juices flowing.
Just a note about National Public Radio. It produces the highest quality talk/news radio on the radio, except when Mo Roca is on. That's not saying much, given that Rush Limbaugh dominates the airwaves. Still, it good. What sometimes ruins the NPR experience for me is the confident awareness of everyone on it that only smart people listen. This is a mild delusion shared by the listeners, of course. If you're a graduate student, you almost have to listen to it. Peer pressure.
I would say that NPR listeners and hosts and guests are more thoughtful than intelligent. Doris Kearns Goodwin is on there right now, and she is wicked smaht. She is also wonderfully unassuming and affable. That's rare on there. More important than that, however, are the aesthetics of intellectualism. You know how your favorite radio station plays blues on Sunday morning? NPR is like that, but all the time. They give you attitude, man.
Saying that you listen to NPR helps to get you taken seriously among academics, lefties, gays and lesbians, and people who can't stomach popular culture. I'm not an academic, but I'm a bisexual left wing activist, or was (the activist part). And I enjoy the absurdity of popular culture, but I can totally understand the need to get away from it. Far away.
But sometimes I need to get away from NPR. Certainly when they are fundraising is a very good time. The puns about Balzac and casual references to Proust and Nietzche during an interview with the maker of the "Snuggie" get to be too much sometimes. Just once in a while.
The rest of talk radio is a wasteland.
5 comments:
Yup, NPR is for self-righteous puds.
How's the winding-down of life been going?
Sometimes, suicidal thoughts are natures way of saying, "ooops!"
So you think I'm a mistake of nature?
Nature doesn't make mistakes. It just is. Nature does however replicate things imperfectly and, sometimes, in very deeply flawed ways. To anthropomorphise nature is a mistake. My mistake as I alluded to it in the previous post. Nature, as a system of chemistry, biology, and odds, sometimes just doesn't work well.
What you're bumbling around for is irrelevance. I'm irrelevant to nature. I can't reproduce, so I have no role to play. I'm a dead end.
Do you see yourself as flawed, like me?
I'm irrelevant, too, Darren. At least you can write well and make people laugh. I take little shots at you, but on some level you have my admiration.
I'm not pathetic or anything, but close, I guess.
I'm so sorry, Darren, for these little barbs. :(
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