Driving from Sonoma to Napa, California this evening, I asked my passenger if she would like to listen to OPR on the car radio. “What’s OPR?” she responded. “Obama Praise Radio,” was my explanation. She disputed this characterization of National Public Radio but agreed that we could turn on All Things Considered. Daniel Schorr was talking about Paul Krugman‘s description of the decade 2000 through 2009 as “the big zero” in which nothing good happened. Schorr contradicted Krugman by citing a stellar achievement: “This was the decade that gave us our first African-American president, Barack Obama.”
8 thoughts on “Obama Praise Radio”
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I’m a regular NPR listener, mostly ATC (which, Phil, is not the ATC you probably first think of) and some of the weekend pseudo-journalistic stories. I quite like it and often times find myself engaged in a one-directional semi-enlightening argument with the commentators. However, why is it that whenever Mr. Schorr comes on I feel my shoulders tightening and my face cringing? I just get angry with this guy. I think your new acronym is quite apt, but he’s absolutely the worst liberal lemming of them all. For a while I had thought they took him off the air – but then Obama got elected, and his raison d’etre seems to have been renewed.
In any case, I’m glad I’m not alone in my perception of NPR, and in particular, Mr. Schorr.
cheers.
Oh, I don’t know that that is a particularly apt characterization of
NPR, and in any case this example is more about praising Us for being
able to elect a black man, than about Obama himself.
What I find bizarre is the tendency on NPR to frame so many news stories in
terms of whoever the current the president is, when his role is mostly peripheral in these events.
This has been going on long before this president.
So we get story leads like “The President expressed sadness for the
miners that died overnight”, “The President called to congratulate
the team on its championship”, “The President expressed his concern
over this breaking news story”. So what? Focus on the actual event, please.
Isn’t our president just as much white as he is black????????
Chooey: Now you’re talking like my friend who supported Hillary Clinton. She was exasperated with me for voting for Barack Obama, who was, to her, yet another tall man moving effortlessly into high office (http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2009/01/20/another-tall-man-becomes-president-of-the-united-states/ ). She did not see a big difference among tall men with different skin tones.
wally w: sounds like NPR is just another State broadcaster, praising the Dear Leader in every conceivable situation. Living in the UK where the State broadcaster extorts close to $200 out of every household for the annual “licence fee”, I feel strongly that State involvement in any broadcast medium should be prohibited, and the State should have to buy advertising time on privately-owned broadcasters, just like anyone else, to get its message out.
Turning to “praising Americans for voting for Obama”, I’ve heard it said that a vote for Obama was in large part, a narcissistic act: the idea is that people wanted to personally take part in the historic first election of a black president. What do you guys think of that?
Stephen: Honestly, race was not a factor for me either way. I saw
Obama as much better than the McCain/dreadful ticket, and
marginally better than Hillary. Note than electing Hillary
would have been just as historic, and maybe a better bet
to get elected in that there are more women than blacks.
Where race is a factor is that you folks can pat me on the back
for not letting it be a factor.
Stephen: In http://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2007/12/12/election-2008-prediction-obama-wins-by-5-percent-we-will-all-be-dep/ I wrote “The Republicans will lose the 2008 election. People are tired of war” and “Listening to Hillary Clinton, people feel that our problems are persistent, serious, and will require vastly higher taxes to address. Listening to Barack Obama, people feel that our problems are temporary, slight, and can be fixed without raising taxes. Barack Obama will win the nomination and therefore the election.” Applying’s Occam’s Razor, we don’t need to look at race as a factor in the election. Hillary was depressing (if only we’d known that the truth about our circumstances would be far more depressing!) and the Republicans, after losing a war or two, decided to run a candidate who was 80% dead.
I enjoy listening to NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered on my drive to/from work. Many of the stories are quite fascinating, and I often find myself sitting in my car after reaching my destination so I can hear the end of a story.
That said, like benc, I absolutely cannot stand Daniel Schorr. What he says usually amounts to superficial crap, but he manages to convey an amazingly superior-than-thou attitude saying it. I often think it’s just the illusion of higher authority generated by his deep bass voice that keeps him on the air.