Preznint Drunkuncle...How will he stand up to al-Qaeda?...
There's a problem with Howard Kurtz's take
on NPR's refusal to allow The George and Juan Show a free pass to soak
up valuable air-time. Kurtz would rather buy into Williams' Alma Martyr shtick
("It makes no sense to me. President Bush has never given an interview
in which he focused on race. . . . I was stunned by the decision to
turn their backs on him and to turn their backs on me.") than deal with
the fact that NPR offered to interview the president, just not through an overawed flack like Williams.
I listened to that Bush/Williams interview from January and it was a total stink-bomb. NPR gave it wall to wall coverage, breaking format and carrying it
at the top of both hours of All Things Considered.
It was a travesty. Williams was in full, Fawning Fox News
Toady-mode, pitching softball after softball at the president and
offering no follow-up questions. It left the line between journalism
and PR way behind and crossed into the territory of worship.
The January interview was one of the stops on Bush's PR junket to
Sell The Surge. And the president, for his part, was doing his best
impression of your condescending drunk uncle at about three whiskeys
in. This was the, "(T)he vice president is a person reflecting a half-glass-full mentality" interview, if you'll recall. Right. That one.
The next Thursday's listener mail segment was a bloodbath.
In spite of its center-right tilt, NPR does not cater to the
dwindling number of people in this country who still support the
president. His brand of Mission Accomplished™ PR pageantry may do just
fine for the intellectually passive rubes in the Bill O'Reilly set over
at Fox (which is where this latest Bush/Williams love-in landed), but
NPR's audience trends, I think, toward hailing from the 75% of the
country who don't support Bush and the war anymore. This is the same
majority of the population who have opposed the Surge from the outset, actually, lest we forget.
Why would NPR open their flank at this point by acting as a showboat
for a wildly unpopular president, especially if he will only agree to
speak through a lackey? Their listeners don't want it. The dead-enders
who still relish the oily Drive-Thru aftertaste of White House
propaganda have got plenty of places to turn to get their fix these
days. What possible incentive is there to lay down and make it one more?
Well, maybe now that NPR are about to be viciously mau-maued by the
full complement of Republican water-carriers, they will understand more
of where we "far left loonies" are coming from. Best of luck to them.