Slow News Month

I don’t wish to discourage my vast and fanatical army of readers, but updates will continue to be sporadic for the next week or two as preoccupations not having to do with public broadcasting rudely intrude. (Much like the Chinese population, if you line up all Airbag Moments readers four abreast and march them into the ocean they would never stop. For the Chinese this is because their reproduction rate would more than make up for the activity. Airbag Moments readers are simply contrary and would refuse the command.)

I have no doubt my stalwart cadre of co-contributors will fill in for me, but I apologize in advance if their non-existence prevents them from doing so.

A couple of tidbits to recommend if you missed today’s Morning Edition.

I sometimes find the “Storycorps” segments to be mawkish or depressing, but this morning’s was really wonderful. If it doesn’t melt your heart you must be Ann Coulter. (I told you stop reading my blog, Ann! Does the phrase “restraining order” mean anything to you?) It throws into high relief the difference between the New Testament/Liberal approach to crime and punishment and the Old Testament approach favored by the c.i.n.o.s (Christians In Name Only) on the right. It’s such a perfect parable that it’s hard to believe it’s true.

Also notable was a quirky story about the US government rushing to patent the atomic bomb during the Manhattan project.

The NPR Media Player

Recently NPR introduced a special media player that many of its programs now employ on their websites.

(Find my more recent and negative thoughts about this here.)

Here are some pros and cons of version 1.2:

Pros:

• The player automatically organizes shows into discrete segments. Thus if you click to listen to the entire Wait Wait Don’t Tell me episode the player displays it in labeled subsections, like “Not My Job”. That is really nice, and is just one part of the player’s…
• There is Jukebox playlist functionality. In addition to dividing shows into useful subsections the player also accumulates individual stories as you click on them. Thus you can browse the NPR website and click on a series of stories which gradually install themselves into the player’s playlist. It’s even easy to delete and re-order items in the playlist.

Cons:

• Big Brother. As far as I know the player doesn’t give the listener the choice of downloading the clips for later playback. Downloadable files and podcasts must be provided separately on a show by show basis. Many programs, like “Wait Wait”, do indeed provide such files, but who knows how long that will last? Making media viewable only online is a nefarious trend that eliminates an important feature of the internet, and I don’t like anything that appears to be part of it.
• Playback problems. I have experienced a number of playback seizures, sometimes lasting several minutes, especially when trying to adjust the play head to hear a section again. Presumably this will improve over time.

Neither pro nor con:

• Advertisements occur within the playback. Listening is generally prefaced with an ad for, for example, NPR store digital radios. On the other hand the advertisements are far less obtrusive than the station IDs and sponsor messages every twenty minutes that you hear on the radio, not to mention PLEDGE DRIVES (curse them!), so I can’t really call these ads a net negative. On the other hand I can’t tell how often the ads are meant to display. Sometimes they play only before the first selection, sometimes, and I think this is just a bug because it’s far too often, they seem to play between each one.

Overall I think the player is a positive development and long overdue.

Props to the NPR web techs!

Hypocritical Mass

From meteorologists we know that storm systems are created when air masses with different qualities encounter each other. High pressure meets low, warm meets cold, dry meets moist.

In politics and business hypocrisy is created when two idea masses with different agendas collide. Generally the conflict is between what needs to be said and what needs to be done, or between what should be done and what various interests would prefer to have done instead.

Any regular public radio listener can tell that the world is enduring a perfect storm of hypocrisy, and it seems to be intensifying.

A small case in point: I don’t actually believe writers should use the worn out cliche “perfect storm”, but there it is anyway. It is what it is.

Actually, I really don’t approve of that ever more popular tautology, “it is what it is,” either.

And I hate blogs!

In light of these unfortunate facts, I feel I must apologize to my family, most importantly, and, of course, to the American people.

Let’s take a look at the map of the category 5 hypocricanes that have made landfall recently, each covered by brave public radio correspondents on the scene yelling into their microphones in an attempt to be heard over powerful, putrid winds.

The Florida & Michigan primaries

Florida is a well-known magnet for hypocricanes, but rarely do they stretch north all the way to Michigan. Obama and Clinton have each created high-minded sounding arguments why the primary fiascoes in those states should be handled one way or the other. By amazing coincidence each camp’s moral calculus has come out in such a way that they support the answer most likely to give them advantage in the delegate count. What are the odds? Wouldn’t it be refreshing if each just said “Look, I’m running for president. I’m obviously going to want the solution that serves my cause, no matter what the rules said when the states intentionally broke them.”

The Boeing/Airbus Contract

This is another massive system stretching from Washington, D.C. to Washington state, and reaching as far south as Alabama. Like the aforementioned Hypocricane, this one is accompanied by a deafening whining sound.

Autonomically allegiance-pledging Boeing union workers interviewed on Morning Edition had the nerve to mouth flag-draped inanities like “hey, we’re not going to have a French-made product protecting the United States!”

First of all, France is our ally, not our enemy, as much as Republican demagoguery would have you think otherwise. Second, you work for Boeing, you jingoistic meat-head. Think about it for one second. Who buys billions of dollars of Boeing-made military equipment? That’s right, OTHER COUNTRIES!!!! What if they, like you, sit around their union halls (somehow making double-overtime I’m sure) demanding that only planes made by domestic companies (i.e. not Boeing…see where I’m headed?) are good enough to protect their troops?

This particularly transparent example of American exceptionalism is so stupid that it will, if its principle is followed to its logical conclusion, result in the opposite of its own thinly disguised agenda.

Then of course we have the politicians. By another stunning coincidence the feelings of the various congress-people involved in this matter line up exactly with money the states they represent stand to gain or lose. Coincidences are to hypocricanes what downed tree limbs are to hurricanes.

Eliot Spitzer

A crusader against corruption and, so sadly for him, prostitution rings, is found to be an enthusiastic repeat customer of “Emperor’s Club VIP”. I guess VIP stands for Very Ironic Politicians.

Full disclosure: I, myself, once tried their much more reasonably priced service, Emperor’s Club VIB. (Very Ignored Bloggers) I don’t recommend it.

Okay, Spitzer looks bad and everyone is calling for his resignation, especially Republicans. I wonder if ostentatious non-resigners Senators David Vitter (R-Louisiana) or Larry Craig (R-Men’s Room) are among them? God, for the sake of this blog entry, I certainly hope so. And let’s hear from our self-appointed moral compass gazers on the religious right about this matter. Somebody get the reaction of the not very reverend Ted Haggard.

(Hey, Bob and Brooke, isn’t it lucky for OTM that the Spitzer thing came out on a Monday?)

In Conclusion and In Summary

As a staunch small-government conservative I propose a massive new federal program based on FEMA to help deal with damage caused by these terrible hypocricanes. Let’s call it FIMA, the Federal Irony Management Agency. I’d like to suggest we appoint someone as brilliant as Michael Brown to run it. How about Senator Tim Calhoun?

We’re going to need enough FIMA trailers for the whole nation at this point. Aren’t you excited to discover what industrial poisons their insulation is ironically made of.

Putting the “L.A.” in Gangland

If you love HBO’s The Wire but find it insufficiently depressing then you’ll be happy to know The Wire continues on … in real life!

Listen to an incredibly valuable set of reports on today’s Day to Day.

Gang culture and violence is one of those problems that won’t go away. This means the press and pop culture tend to ignore it since the real currency of the media is change. If a story stays the same there’s nothing new to cover.

Day to Day has used a recent up-tick in tragically lethal incidents to focus a potentially helpful amount of attention on the festering problems of South Los Angeles. (Re-branded from the notorious “South Central Los Angeles”. Taste the difference!)

Give it a listen, but don’t expect any answers or hope. The forces involved are not subject to anyone’s control, especially not parents, public school teachers, politicians, police, or prayer.

But you already knew that from watching The Wire.

Special recognition should go to the chronically excellent Mandalit Del Barco’s segment.

More on Morons

Eric Westervelt had a great story on ME this morning that’s a good coda to The World’s report on sex-based segregation of buses in Israel. It describes ultra-orthodox Jews, known as Harediim (or charedim), moving to suburban areas of Israel that have been spared them in the past.

The Harediim then seek to impose their own sort of Sharia on non-orthodox residents, putting up signs demanding modest dress and hurling rocks and abuse at those who don’t comply with their not-very-Project-Runway fashion sense.

There goes the neighborhood!

Dis American Life

Have you ever heard the expression “there’s nothing so boring as other people’s dreams?”

Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life” works hard to prove the saying wrong on a semi-regular basis.

Alex Blumberg’s 25 minute piece from episode 351 about tracking down his childhood babysitter is a good case in point. There’s a moment when Blumberg says his former sitter, after hours of telephone conversation, was waiting for the other shoe to drop, worried she’d somehow been a negative influence on little Alex.

Turns out she wasn’t.

And that’s precisely what’s wrong with misbegotten TAL segments. We, the audience, endure dramatic pause after dramatic pause, same old music interval after same old music interval, for that crazy twist you never saw coming that will redeem the murdered 20-40 minutes of airtime. Too often it just never arrives.

It’s the old radio memoir bait-and-switch: a strip club where the clothes stay on, a seventies television magic show with all the cheese but no actual tricks, an extended joke with a lot of spittle and no discernible punchline.

But how can you know before the end that you are in the midst of one of these hour wasters?

Fear not, loyal reader(s)! As a public service provided entirely without pledge drive we have created a survey to help you determine when a TAL segment is slowly going nowhere so you can turn off the radio and perhaps ask a loved one to entertain you for 20-40 minutes instead.

Instructions: for each criterion below that is true add the number of points specified.

1. The story is about the childhood of an official contributing editor (1 point)
2. Ira Glass keeps sounding amazed, but you can’t figure out why (1 point)
3. A musical interlude occurs within the story so you can have a moment to let what was just revealed really sink in. Instead you start wondering how many times you’ve heard the music before and if they’re trying to save royalty money (2 points)
4. There seem to be more music intervals than actual narration (1 point)
5. The narrator has a speaking voice made for novel-writing (1 point)
6. The events of the tale could only ever transpire in crazy old New York City! (1 point)
7. You realize you wandered out of hearing range of the radio five minutes ago and didn’t notice (1 point)
8. You thought you were listening to TAL, but you suddenly realize it’s Studio 360 (2 points)
9. You hear a pitiful sound, turn to listen, and discover it’s your own voice intoning “Oh my god, this is so boring!!” (4 points)

If the story you are listening to scores 3 or more total points, TURN OFF YOUR RADIO IMMEDIATELY and leave it off for at least one hour.

To be sure, This American Life is also responsible for some astonishing, wonderful pieces. It is the momentum from these that keeps people listening through the chaff. Some of the personal stories are beautiful, even haunting. Others are hilarious and diverting.

Most often the segments which qualify more as actual journalism than as essay are really excellent and serve to fill in the gaping holes found in other media. What is the day to day experience of the war in Iraq actually like for American soldiers and Iraqis? That question deserves innumerable TAL tales, and the ones they have produced are unique and reveal a poignant level of detail not available anywhere else.

The best stories are like little worlds in poetic miniature that capture the beauty and absurdity of life the way every piece of a broken glass hologram contains the entire image. Each story beat can take the whole set-up in an entirely unexpected direction. Jack Hitt, one of the most artful and consistent TAL contributors, produced a shining example of this about the island of Nauru. If you haven’t heard it make it the next thing you listen to.

One final small critique: Their attempts to shoehorn the segments they pick for a given week into a single theme are often laughably unsuccessful. Guys, just give it up when no theme is appropriate and call it a smörgåsbord episode or something.

Okay, reader(s), your job is to post about the best stories you have ever heard on TAL or the least apt TAL attempted themes of the week. You may also want to try adding to the list of warning signs that the TAL story you’re listening to should be abandoned.

Don’t all post at the same time, by the way, last time you crashed the wordpress servers.

I can’t believe it IS butter! (sexy npr part 2)

Today’s Morning Edition featured DVD recommendations by “Eve’s Bayou” director Kasi Lemmons.

The sexy part is that she recommends “Last Tango in Paris” as a film she can watch over and over again.

The really sexy part is that she and Steve Inskeep don’t talk about that piece of cinema history in ways that indicate exactly how controversial it is. This could lead to some extremely humorous moments if naive NPR listeners (are there any?) bring that movie home knowing nothing more than what is said in the segment, such as Lemmons’ heartwarming travelogue description “It’s the music and the mood and Paris…Marlon Brando talking to his dead wife.”

Now, Dear Reader(s), I don’t know if you’ve experienced this film, but, if you have, I’ll bet the scene that’s stuck to the roof of your mind has a lot more to do with Marlon Brando talking to his very, very alive lover about, shall we say, pork products, while he, uhhhm, busies himself with a dairy product.

Or maybe Kasi and Steve just assume that all NPR listeners, upper-middlebrow(c)(tm)Airbag Moments as we are, must be familiar enough with Last Tango to not need any warning. And perhaps they are correct.

But what about the people listening to Morning Edition for the first time because they themselves are featured in the story about “a new kind of Sunday school, where families from a range of religions gather to learn about helpfulness, obedience, service and friendliness?”

What if those folks stuck around to hear the movie tips?!?!

Enjoy the film, families of many faiths! Use it as a teachable moment to instruct your kids about what helpfulness, obedience, service and friendliness meant in the seventies.

-

Today’s sexy moment runner-up (for sophomores only):

Steve Kuhn’s helpfully “Now I’m awake!” opening to his story about North Korea:

“In his February 25th inauguration speech Lee Myung-bak dangled a big, fat carrot in front of North Korea.”

Reaching Out (ewww!)

There’s another public radio linguistic tic that’s spreading faster than Lindsay Lohan at an Italian waiter convention!

It is the phrase “reaching out,” used to mean contact, appeal to, please, solicit, as in “Mitt Romney is not yet reaching out to the all-important gay animal tamer vote.”

The phrase “Reaching out” isn’t new, but its frequency is suddenly off the charts with the intense (albeit superficial) campaign coverage of the last few months. Listening to recent reports might convince you the presidential candidates had mutated into thousand-armed Hindu deities.

Take Day To Day’s two-way between reporter Anthony Brooks and Republican strategist Dan Schnur today. Here’s a highlight:

Schnur: “…it gives him the party’s leading conservative spokespersons from the president on down to help him reach out to the party’s conservative base and try to motivate them toward a fall election.”

To which Brooks responds: “And what does he have to do though to really reach out and convince them…”

And what about all the unintended nasty overtones of the phase “reaching out?” Some scuzzy guy going for a grope on the subway. Zombies’ rotting hands emerging from their graves. Fill in your own.

I imagine AT&T still regrets being associated with the phrase “reach out and touch someone.” They may be the “new” AT&T now, but I’ll bet they’re still listed in the Meghan’s law database.

Of course the habit is not limited to public radio. A quick google of “clinton” and the phrase “reaching out” generates almost a million hits. But one of the themes of this blog is that public media, to demonstrate why it matters and deserves listeners’ donations, must rise above the rest of the silly fish-wrap* manufacturers.

So, if you are a public radio host or a campaign reporter, think about reaching out to a thesaurus in the very near future.

* I adore the phrase “fish-wrap.” I love nothing more than referring to the New York Times as “the fish-wrap of record.” (c)(tm)2008 Airbag Moments.

But finger-staining news is inexorably evaporating into carpal- tunnel- inducing news, so we need a digital version of this perfect put-down.

Reader(s): Please suggest a replacement for “fish-wrap” that will take us into the 21st century!

Sense of Omission

Since I just wrote about PRI’s The World’s routinely excellent global coverage I think it’s appropriate to point out where this kind of reporting isn’t adequate. Luckily I have former foreign policy adviser to the Edwards campaign Michael Signer to do it for me. (With a name like “Signer”, shouldn’t he be the presidential candidate? Or maybe he has a brother named “Bill”…)

His recent Washington Post commentary “It’s a Scary World, Don’t Campaign Reporters Care?” spanks the media for ignoring or only superficially covering the foreign policy positions of the candidates, even though such policy statements have (shocker!) proven historically to be accurate predictors of policy.

Interestingly, from a Public Radio point of view, he states the following:

In November, I got a call from a major national radio program saying that they’d be doing a substantive piece on the candidates’ foreign policies — how they were developed and what the process revealed about the candidates’ thinking.

Perfect! I thought. At last. I was in Iowa City and drove 45 minutes through blinding snow to a small studio for an hour-long interview. When the segment aired, my heart sank. It had changed into a quick-and-dirty recitation of a few policy proposals from all the candidates, Republican and Democrat — not the substantive compare-and-contrast that had been promised.

I can’t say for sure whether or not this was National Public Radio, but a little Googling strongly indicts a report by Martha Wexler on All Things Considered of December 9, 2007. Signer doesn’t even merit a sound-bite from his hour long interview.

Whatever the purpose of this NPR report, and however appropriate or not Signer’s interview was for that purpose, his point is very, very important. We live in extremely dangerous times. The entire news media, and Public Radio in particular, need to make international coverage a huge priority.

Take just one foreign policy example. I was sentient during the cold war and woke up sweating from my share of Terminator-style atom bomb nightmares, but I feel the US is at more risk of Nuclear attack then at any time in our history.

Sure, my opinion doesn’t matter, I’m just a grumpy blogger.

But what about this fact? Both Bush and Kerry, men who agree on little, were asked during a 2004 debate what the greatest threat facing our nation was, and both immediately responded “nuclear proliferation,” specifically nukes in the hands of terrorists. (Ok, Bush started to answer “Jesus” out of debate habit but then caught himself. And what he really said was “nukuler perlimifiration,” but the point remains.)

Am I the only one who remembers that? Am I the only one who actually believes it?

What has the Bush administration done about it since? Precisely nothing, as far as I can tell, but I can’t really be sure because the media barely covers it!

Note to the the media: stop waiting to cover problems only after they explode and try to do some predicting. I know it’s no fun to be Cassandra, but it is your chosen profession.

Case in point: Daniel Zwerdling on ATC did an unbelievably good job warning us about a Hurricane flooding catastrophe in New Orleans in a lengthy 2-part report aired in 2003!. For people who love New Orleans listening to that story wasn’t a Driveway Moment it was an entire Driveway Afternoon. (Did he get a Pulitzer for that? He should have.)

Maybe the media can try that kind of coverage with a few scarily important international conundrums?

Cokie Adds Life (and Sense)

Maybe NPR correspondents get paid by the “sense”?

NPR saint/matriarch and sometime seagull at the television news landfill of conventional wisdom Cokie Roberts (you’re better than that, Cokie!) commented on the Democratic primary on Morning Edition today.

I was disappointed to hear the following at the very top of her “three-way” with Renee Montagne and Steve Inskeep:

“…because there’s a lot of sense that these primaries tomorrow are the make or break primaries for her campaign and there’s been you know so much criticism that she’s is not human enough and these shows give some sense of humanity…”

Steve & Renee make the extra effort to avoid asking for a sense (thanks, guys!), but she volunteers two senses in one sentence anyway!  The initial one is described as “a lot” of sense.  What a bargain!

There’s a lot of sense among a lot of us here at Airbag Moments that the phrase “a lot of sense” is really unattractive, not to mention that it has a lot of sense of meaningless.  How many senses is a lot?  I think six is a lot, since we humans use only five.  But maybe a lot is more like a hundred senses.  I’ve heard that OT-8 scientologists like Tom Cruise and Vinnie Barbarino have that many.

Let’s decide on a new grammatical term for these “sense” constructions.  Literary style mavens implore us to avoid the passive voice, often for good reason.  I propose we should name these phrases that use sense in this way something like “ultra-passive voice”.

Any other ideas?