The World: Back of the bus

PRI’s The World is a heroically consistent “eat your broccoli” public radio show. Though not often gripping, they are one of the few sources of good, frequent global reporting in American media – especially important given our current president’s alarming New Yorker-cover-ish view of the globe. Let your local public radio station know they should subscribe to this show.

So far today’s most entertaining/shocking story on public radio is one The World presented on fundamentalist Israeli Jewish women self segregating on buses. Wow, just…wow. Orthodox Jewish burkas. Way to be!

Memo to Middle-Eastern countries: try not to make it look too much like you all deserve each other.

Find and listen to the report on this page.

Aside from The World’s parchingly dry style, the only other complaint I have about the show is the time it wastes on aggressively obtuse world music coverage at the end of each episode. The more incongruously hybridized a musical group is, the more eager The World is to provide them with publicity.

Then again I do loves me some Tutsi/Cambodian trance-ragtime played on found antique Inuit toy instruments by Chechen octogenarians.

Theme Music Omnibus, part 1

Ahh, the theme music of public radio. I’m not talking about actual songs with lyrics like the exhausted one that opens Prairie Home Companion, I’m talking about the music that begins each show and plays behind the front end teasers.

Through repetition they become quite ingrained.

Can you identify which theme this is?

(slowly)

Da da, da da

Da da, da da

Da da, da da

Dum dum DUM!!

If you are a true public radio-head like I am I’m sure you pegged that as the spritely and lovable opening music of All Things Considered, composed originally by Don “even NPR can’t spell my name right” Voegeli.

That theme has become jazzier and a bit more flatulent over the years, and every time they tinker with it I initially despise the new version, then I get used to it, and finally I begin to enjoy it. I’ve realized something: it’s not that I like the music qua music, it’s that over time I simply develop a positive Pavlovian association between the music and the content of the show.

There, see, I said something nice. Read it again, it’s in there, I promise.

Morning Edition, meanwhile, has an opening tune by the prolific giant of public radio music BJ Leiderman that sails dangerously close to the shoals of elevator music, especially when the guitar takes over the melody, but again it’s saved by sentimental attachment.

My favorite Leiderman work is another slightly muzak-ish one he created for Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. I’m not sure why, but I think it has something to do with the super-human tightness of the final section, heard at the end of each episode. Dah-dahh, dah da-da da-daaaahhhhhhh *bleeng*.

The Diane Rehm show has quite a theme, heavy on astonishingly athletic piano. It’s bombastic as all heck. The left hand does this constant “bing-bong, bing bong” as if a town crier is calling everyone to the square to announce the eminent arrival of the sovereign or the black plague. Listen for it next time you turn on the show. It finishes with a show-off complex run up the entire keyboard. I always picture the musician falling off the bench unconscious after the effort. I once heard Diane say as an aside that she’d never change the theme, and I agree.

Finally, in honor of their recent win of a coveted “baggie” award, I’d like to bring up the creepy and disturbing ditty that begins each edition of On The Media, written by “bassist/composer” Ben Alison.

But first I have a question. Why are they always so careful to say “bassist/composer Ben Allison” at the end of every episode? Which is it? Bassist or Composer? Pick a side, sir, we’re at war!

He must have instructed them to credit him just this way, which implies he’s ashamed of being a composer and just wants to play bass all the time. His parents must love that. “It’s not enough you want to try to make a living in music, son, but you want to be a bassist? Don’t tell your mother!”

Or maybe he just thinks chicks dig instrumentalists. But if he’s going to force the show to list non-composing traits and abilities in his composing credit, why stop with bassist? Why not “our theme was written by bassist/composer/dog lover/morning person Ben Allison.”

Sorry, I’ll now return to the topic at hand, the music itself. What are they trying to say? What atmosphere are they trying to create? I really want to know what they asked for from Ben and how they felt about the results.

Maybe they said “Give us something like All Things Considered, only, you know, for media. A tune that ‘All Media Considered’ would have. Or ‘All Things Media.’ See what I mean?” If they said that then it clearly didn’t work out. In fact, if that’s what they said I hope that Ben’s “bassist/composer” credit is all he got in return.

But maybe it was more like this:

“Okay, Ben, what we want…uhmm, Ben, maybe you could put down the bass for one minute while I’m talking to you…thank you…anyway, what we want, and I think I can safely say “we” – though I haven’t actually spoken to Brooke about this yet – what we want is a kind of slow, melodically disturbing horn section that makes you feel the way you do when you see someone you recognize striding purposefully toward you, but then you realize they aren’t who you thought they were, and in fact they’re kind of scary looking, and they’re coming right over to you and you suddenly realize there’s no one else around and you start to try to come up with some kind of an escape plan, and then they’re right up on you and it’s too late, and you’re feeling light-headed with panic, but then they just walk right by you, and you just stand there wondering what happened and why you got so freaked out. You know that feeling, right? What’s that? Yes, you can play bass in it.”

If they said that then it worked out perfectly, and I hope Ben was remunerated well enough to get his parents off his case and purchase whatever the Bass equivalent of a Stradivarius is.

I am now suspicious of and disoriented by the popular media, and for that I guess I’m grateful to OTM, and, more specifically, grateful to the music of bassist/composer/cavity fighter Ben Allison.

The Best Show On Public Radio Is…

Just in time for Oscar night!

Okay, my favorite NPR program is “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me“, but I feel the need to give the award to something with redeeming social value.

The best serious show is clearly NPR’s “On The Media“, hosted by Brooke Gladstone and Bob Garfield.

Let me count the whys.

• The piquant bouquet of truth, unexpected from an advertising industry guy (host Bob Garfield), that cuts right through the more outlandish inanities of mediated consensual reality. On second thought it makes complete sense that an ad guy would have the most sensitive “lie-dar”(c )2008 Airbag Moments(tm).
• The pointed interviews are the most probing in American public radio. The questions are usually genuinely challenging without the strident partisan sneer indulged in by the modern BBC.
• The wry attitudes of Brooke and Bob. It’s not so much one of liberal bias as it is a refreshing and healthy amazement/incredulity at the news of the day. Isn’t that how everyone who pays attention to current events and trends feels? Isn’t it odd when newsreaders and correspondents lack that tone?
• It’s actually funny on purpose. Most public radio attempts at humor (“Wait, Wait” excepted of course) fall flat due to rigorously enforced harmlessness. Witness the many recent attempts to explore political humor during the writers’ strike. OTM manages to make it work more often than not, which is saying a lot for public radio.
• Keeping the “sense” questions to a minimum. Enough said.
• Consistency. Of course not every story is as gripping as every other, but in the main they pursue consequential topics with admirable clarity and thoroughness.
• The cute little pause after “Edited…” and before “…by Brooke.” This weekly touch implies a warm but healthily competitive relationship between the hosts.

What’s not to like? The most tedious stories tend to involve Baby Boomer preoccupations. How long was that piece on the Beatles & the Maharishi last weekend? 20 minutes? I love the Beatles, but suddenly the show felt a bit like an overstaying dinner guest who keeps failing to notice the hosts loudly doing the dishes. How must it have seemed to people who share no interest in Beatlesiana? (I’ll explore in a future post how 20-minute segments featuring esoteric and/or ancient musicians is Kryptonite to way too many public radio programs.)

But these problems are nothing in the face of years of important stories which are often ignored by the rest of the media.

So congratulations, Brooke & Bob, you win this year’s “baggie”. You’ll be receiving your little statuette soon.

Hillary Clinton “Ya Know” watch, Day 12

Ya know, maybe Hillary’s new love of “ya know” is just a “tell”, ie that little unconscious thing a person does while playing Poker, such as cocking an eyebrow, that spoils their attempt to bluff the other players.

Here’s a Hillary quote from Mara Liasson’s Morning Edition story today on Clinton’s recent embarrassment of primary losses:

“Ya know, this is a long journey to the nomination, ahh ya know, some weeks, uhh, ya know, uhh, one of us is up and the other’s down…”

At that point the sound faded out so I couldn’t get a larger sample of Ya Knowing, but it’s clear that at this rate she is close to depleting our nation’s precious strategic “ya know” reserve.

If she wants to be taken seriously as a green candidate she absolutely must reduce her “ya know” consumption from three per sentence to less than one!

Otherwise how will she be able to criticize McCain’s gluttonous squandering of the phrase “my friends” without looking like a hypocrite?

Ya know?

Other hilights from today’s ME:

If you are a fan of extra-plummy female British accents, as opposed to the noisome one affected by Fiona Chutney, Nigella Lawson is a pure pleasure. To paraphrase my great uncle, I have no idea what she was talking about, but I loved it.

I also enjoyed the interview with Norman Lear, in spite of its blandness.

Finally, there was a terrific listener letter making the useful point that if Mitt Romney and other Mormons feel that the nation was prejudiced against him because of his religion, maybe they should realize how unfair it is that an atheist running for national office would suffer even greater bigotry…from them. (How about a little more coverage of that, NPR?)

Note: I feel I should say that I don’t dislike Mormons. On the contrary, if any generalization about the Mormons I’ve known can be made it is that they are friendly, helpful, sunny, hard-working people. It’s just that I find their young belief system risibly vulnerable to debunking, historical, archaeological, and otherwise. Someone said a cult is a small, unpopular religion and a religion is a large, popular cult. Mormonism is a perfect example. (See Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven.)

If we had only mainstream Mormons available as a study sample we might even draw some sort of causal connection between theological gullibility and personal goodness. But there are just so many counter-examples…

Now that Romney is out of the race I’m sure public radio shows, and thus this blog, will find less reason to mention Mormonism.

She’s Krista Tippett

Sometimes it’s like the rain.

“I’m Krista Tippett.”

“I’m Krista Tippett.”

“I’m Krista Tippett.”

“And this is…” <pause> “…Speaking of Faaaaiiiiith.”

How does she always manage to say it exactly the same way? And is it just me or does she say her name a lot more than other public radio hosts? Oh well, she’s Krista Tippett.

A probing, clear eyed analysis of religion in modern life is a great idea for a show, but SoF’s editorial stance, which seems to me to be something along the lines of “isn’t it just so nice that people are religious!” (what Daniel Dennett calls “Belief in belief“), leaves me a little cold. The episodes I’ve heard tend to sound like commercials for the ideas/dogmas the guests espouse. Krista rarely challenges them.

A laudable but all-too-brief exception occurred in a recent interview with a Mormon scholar. There is a Thanksgiving cornucopia of refutations to bring against Mormon historical and theological claims, but Krista chose only one. It was a good one, though. Mormon founder Joseph Smith miraculously “translated” some actual hieroglyphic scrolls (before anyone knew how to!) which were subsequently lost and then rediscovered in the 1960s, by which time humankind had mastered non-miraculous hieroglyphic translation. Inconveniently for Tippett’s guest it turns out Smith’s version was the very worst kind of bullshit. Krista actually brought this situation up with the scholar (go Krista!!) and received an amusingly meaningless response. (Imagine how entertaining and socially beneficial an hour of that kind of hot seat would be!)

You see, the scholar explained, that whole translation gotcha isn’t irrefutable evidence for Smith’s brazen charlatanism, rather it is simply one of the solemn mysteries of the Mormon faith!

Wow.  Maybe in 150 years people will consider the whole Enron thing as a solemn mystery of some future faith which some future version of Krista “I’m Krista Tippett” Tippett can ask a believer politely about.

One other thing bugs me about SoF. In an oft-played promo for the show Krista states “you won’t hear many religious authorities” on the show.

I have two problems with this.

First of all, Krista has a Masters from Yale Divinity School. Doesn’t that qualify her as an authority?

Secondly, what the hell is wrong with authority?

Putting the Zero in “Studio 360″

Weekend public radio is astonishingly hit-or-miss: the cacophonous cackles of “Car Talk“, the funereal earnestness of “Speaking of Faith“, and yes, the creepily ubiquitous harmlessness of “Prairie Home Companion“.

Surely there is no one person who enjoys every bit of programming public radio networks find to pass the Judeo-Christian Sabbaths. Of course, as I was once chastised by a local public radio reporter whose story on regional mortarless stone bridges I found so dull as to consider it a public health risk, “the great thing about radio is that if you wait long enough something you do like will come on.”

If what’s on next is PRI’s “Studio 360” I can pretty much guarantee that my wait will be at least an hour.

The show is hosted and created by Kurt “if he co-founded Spy Magazine shouldn’t he be funny?” Andersen, and his choices of topic and style of execution have a lot in common with many other tragically failed treatments for narcolepsy.

The show’s token humorist, Iris Bahr, plays the character of a flibbertigibbet British reporter named Fiona Chutney in what I have to believe is some kind of post-post-post-modern attempt to make fun of making fun of making fun of things. The humor gets hopelessly lost somewhere along the way in most of her sketches, but in today’s episode it becomes clear why.

She makes the classic mistake of trying to parody the fashion world, which is a humor black-hole so dense that not even light comedy can escape.

Think about it. What’s Sasha (Borat/Ali G) Cohen’s only consistently unfunny character? Bruno, the gay fashion world reporter. Which of Ben Stiller’s many bad movies is the worst? “Zoolander” the unhilarious send-up of that zany world we call “fashion.”

The fashion world is already a parody of itself in both unintentional and intentional ways, and parodizing parody just doesn’t work very well. It is to humor what trying to divide by zero is to math.

To make matters less pleasant she employs an accent that is an exact female version of chronic self-amuser Cash Peters of “Marketplace” and “Savvy Traveler” public radio fame.

Bahr’s personal website flaunts an impressively diverse CV that includes service in the Israeli army and Neuropsychology training at Brown, so it’s comforting to know that if she “keeps her day job” she’ll have a lot to fall back on.

Fun fact about Kurt Andersen: he has claimed that Lynne “Aww shucks me and Dick are just folks, what’s all this Darth Vader stuff?” Cheney has pursued a long term “extravagant” flirtation with an unidentified “friend” of his. “Friend”, Kurt? Really? Is it the same anonymous “friend” on whose behalf you solicited free psycho-pharmacological advice from a guest at your last cocktail party?

Whatever.

My personal advice to your “friend” would be to go for it! Join the mile high club on “Marine One”! Personally inspect the endowments of the former head of the National Endowment for the Humanities! Head out on a cougar hunt with the second lady, but beware of accidental discharge…I think Dick taught her everything she knows.

Okay, I’ll stop.

To be fair, given the show’s sterling list of contributors and Andersen’s intelligence and Rolodex, I’m certain they’ve produced many great segments and will produce more in the future. I just haven’t heard any yet. (If you have, post links here!)

Sounds like a piece of, I mean on, Lynne Cheney would be a hoot…

I’m just sayin’.