As I write this, there's a full-on effort by the Republican party to remove federal funding from public broadcasting. Possibly by the time you read this, the effort will have succeeded. One rationale for the attack is that public broadcasting is an unnecessary burden on the government's budget, which leads to a few questions:
- Public broadcasting can't be getting that much cash, or else why are they always begging for money?
- How does indirectly causing downsizing square with the alleged Republican agenda of creating jobs?
- Isn't the price tag for all of NPR and PBS roughly equal to the air freshener in one of our unused and/or non-functioning fighter jets?
- Who could have guessed that programming littered with six-hour operas and ancient British sitcoms wouldn't be wildly profitable?
Another argument is that broadcasting is not a role government should play.
[sarcasm] I totally see the logic of that last point. I mean, who else should we trust but corporate-owned media to keep people informed about corporate crime? There's a demand for hard-hitting reporting about big business wrongdoing, so surely it will be supplied by those same big businesses! The market really does work! [/sarcasm]
There are other arguments, all unconvincing. The attacks on public broadcasting are just one more tentacle of an authoritarian movement's desire to promote stupidity. Several other commentators have noted that the Republican assault on public broadcasting is political, and they're right. Public broadcasting educates. The more that people are stupid, the more they will vote against their own interests, meaning, vote Republican. After all, that party is controlled 100% by the powerful, as opposed to the Democrats, who are a mere 99% controlled.
Public broadcasting's high-mindedness makes it an easy joke target but that's also why it deserves respect. I especially like NPR since I'm more of a radio guy than a TV guy. So the things I'm about to say may sound like I'm insulting NPR but actually I'm not. Please hear me out when I say that if I want to learn something about the world, I'll tune in public radio but if I want to learn how the world operates, including understanding the current let's-defund-public-broadcasting push, I'll listen to sports talk radio.
To explain: on NPR, a topic is discussed and then people call in to express their viewpoint. Everyone is civil, and passion is shunned to a fault. Everyone listens to everyone else's viewpoint, assesses it thoughtfully and then decides whether it is good or bad and expresses their view why. Logic is respected. Education, intelligence and experience are given credit. Articulation and wit earn bonus points.
But public radio is about the only place in life where that sort of thing happens. It's not a flaw in NPR, it's the way things should be. For a lesson in the way things are, I listen to sports talk.
What's respected on sports talk is attitude, volume and passion. In the end though, those things mean nothing in the face of power, which is held entirely by the host, who controls the microphone kill switch. It's not unusual for a caller to be cut off if they manage to say something that proves the host wrong or foolish.
On sports talk radio, "You're an idiot," is enough justification for dismissal of an opposing view. "You suck," is adequate articulation. Passion is stoked and baited. On shows with two hosts, they'll often take unnaturally opposing views just so callers will jump into the argument. After just a few listens, it's obvious much of the controversies (or all of them) are simply theater designed around one goal: keeping listeners' attention and selling that attention to advertisers.
In short, sports talk is a more accurate model for how the majority of people act, how the media works and how society works.
The range of opinions on sports talk are more diverse than NPR. Again, what seems like a flaw is actually a positive. Having greater diversity of values and opinions might seem like a good thing, but that's not necessarily true.
On NPR, each caller's values are roughly the same. They want the best solution to a situation or problem. On sports talk, people hold opinions based on values that are wildly different. They may hate (or love) a team because of the colors of their uniform, or because that team loses (or wins), or because someone on a rival team is a jerk (or a nice guy). There is no point to arguing except for the arguing itself, because there's no baseline to compare.
That also happens to be a decent description of the way many people think and act.
As a young lad, I thought that having the right facts would be sufficient to convince people of anything those facts indicated. Showing them the pain their actions caused would immediately convince them to change their ways. It took my naive, optimistic mind a while to adjust to the idea that some people are not motivated by an opportunity to be kind, or intelligent, or change in any way. They are instead lizard-brained. They respect only power and their only currency is fear. They are the authoritarian movement's leaders and members.
Listening to sports talk radio was for me (and remains) a free education in lizard-brain-ology, handy for practice in understanding irrationality and the cruel stupidities that go with it. So it was no surprise that NPR came under attack. NPR values being correct over power, and that pisses off power.
To a lizard-brained human, gravity, climate change, whether the sky is blue, these aren't facts, these are beliefs and therefore up for grabs. How ironic that faith-based conservatives mock liberal arts and at the same time are so postmodern. Thoughts and actions need adhere to no standards, and none are better than any other, once you play the appropriate faith wildcard.
NPR is one of the very few places that provides the valuable service of not exploiting our lizard-brains for profit. I've learned a lot from NPR, but to really understand things, even why NPR is under attack, I listen to sports talk.
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Larry Nocella writes The Semi-True Adventures of Lar blog at LarryNocella.com. He's the author of the novel Where Did This Come From? The world's first CarbonFree(R) novel according to Carbonfund.org. The book is available as an Amazon Kindle eBook. It is also available for reading online. P.S. You don't need a Kindle to read Kindle eBooks! Download the FREE Kindle app for PC, Apple and smartphones. You can then purchase Kindle books or download free ones! Enjoy!