Letters to the Editor
Elephantman
Published Letters: 1545 Editor's Choice: 16
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This makes sense.
[Read the article: Gonzales in training]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ganzalez is behaving like a 'defendant,' because that is how the Senate Judiciary Committee is treating him. It makes sense to me. I'd do the same thing.
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It's true -- I don't much care what you think.
[Read the article: The real Fox News Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But I'd like to clarify what I was saying, for your benefit.
I know that the Salonistas hate Fox, and that Fox criticism is a perpetual motion enterprise. I don't even like everything I see on Fox. I turn off the worthless Greta Van Sustern. I ignore all of the stupid clebrity crime blotter programming. (Some of which will also be found on the other cable news networks. Shame on all of them.) And I frequently disagree with the boorish Bill O'Reilly.
But I adore Brit Hume, one of the best journalists in Wahsington, and I think the Fox News Sunday program offers some of the best questioning and debate on television. I like the tete a tete involving Bill Kristol, Fred Barnes, Juan Williams and Mara Liasson so much, I'd like it to be available on NPR too.
My points were these:
First, I expect that all of your complaints about Fox will be as effective as my complaints about MSNBC. Good luck.
Second, it is at least as easy to make the case for NPR liberalism as it is to make a case for Fox conservatism. We can argue about the 'degree' of NPR liberalism, but even the leftist demographic at Salon (at least the honest ones in a few of the posts below) seems to acknowledge that NPR tilts decidedly left.
Third, unlike with MSNBC, I feel like I've got every good right and reason to make these kinds of complaints with NPR, and to hope and expect that changes will be made. There isn't any good response to my complaint that in the face of programming like Democracy Now, Tavis Smiley, Farai Chedaya, News and Notes, and with all three of the "Senior News Analysts," no one can seriously claim that NPR represents political balance. It doesn't. As a public broadcasting medium, it should. I think I have every right to expect that I will change NPR before any of you change Fox cable news.
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One funny little NPR/PRI/CPB-funded tidbit...
[Read the article: The real Fox News Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Yesterday brought the news that Yale undergraduate Hyder Akbar had been arrested on charges including arson and reckless endangerment for lighting on fire an American flag on a flagpole attached to a New Haven home. Akbar was one of three Yalies charged with the crime.
For fans of "This American Life," (vigorously defended in this thread as an arts program) they will remember Akbar as the much-celebrated "teenage embed" in Afghanistan. The program was produced with funds from the CPB...
http://www.thislife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=254
Who wants to bet on the next time that program will air?
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WeikuBoy, Fox doesn't care about you.
[Read the article: The real Fox News Democrats]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]They probably hope to piss people like you off. They'll be very happy if you watch, but they really don't want to satisfy your political interests. Unless you happen to have 150,000 shares of News Corp. preferred stock. I'm guessing that's not the case.
But with NPR, our friendly neighborhood liberal public broadcasting outlet, those folks have to answer for their public funding, their public broadcasting mandate, and in many cases their public university affiliation. NPR is obligated to be fair and balanced, and it isn't, by any sensible measure that anyone wants to choose.
And as for Cokie Roberts, just because I want to rub your nose in this one, I never said she was a raving, mouth-foaming liberal (like Amy Goodman or Tavis Smiley or Dan Schorr or any one of a dozen more NPR personalities). I said she was a Democrat and nobody has doubted it. Are there any Republicans at all at NPR? Other than the occasional guest, the answer is, "None at all."
I was laughing out loud at your citation of the Cokie Roberts commentary on the Connecticut Democratic primary. I already told you -- Cokie is an old-school institutionalist. She likes moderate Democrats. She would have liked Joe Lieberman to win the Democratic primary because those are the kinds of Democrats she likes. And she does like Democrats. Cokie Roberts carries no brief for the Bush Administration. Are you kidding? I'll bet anybody $1000 that she has voted Democratic in every Presidential election since, well, since whenever. The point about Cokie Roberts is that she represents the "far right" of NPR. That is to say, the nonexistent right at NPR.
And that status quo -- NPR as a conservative-free zone -- is unacceptable if they want to give voice to the culture wars.
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Wow, that was some hard-hitting journalism...
[Read the article: A conversation with John Edwards]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Nice work, Walter Shapiro. I'm surprised you didn't ask Edwards what his favorite Bruce Springsteen song was, and why. Or pehaps "How do you and Elizabeth find the courage to fight the good fight that you are waging on behalf of the common man?"
What a crock.
Next time, ask Edwards what his plan is for medical malpractice reform. Ask him if he is satisfied with the results of the tobacco litigation a decade later. Ask him for his comments on the allegations that famous trial lawyers in a number of states skirted camapign finance laws in laundering funds to Edwards through their office staffs.
Ask Edwards if he will raise taxes. Ask him to describe what part of the Patriot Act he would eliminate. Ask him if he favors the unionization of TSA workers. Ask him to describe his detailed plan for mandatory reduction of greenhouse gases.
Then publish that interview.
Please, Democrats. Give us Edwards. This is the guy we want to hammer.
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Too bad Ms. Goodling is a Christian, a Republican, and a former employee of the Department of Justice under President Bush...
[Read the article: Report: Gonzales aide resigns]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Because if she were a Muslim, a member of Al Qaeda, and Gitmo prisoner, the readers of Salon might be interested in her constitutional rights and a careful application of due process...