Don’t get me wrong, I love Public Radio, NPR especially. My life would be far less enjoyable without it.

But nobody’s perfect.

Public broadcasting in general and public radio in particular are the last bastions of content inoculated from the ever-lower lowest common denominator free market.  As a result it shall be held to higher standards than the mass-media money honeys, squawking heads, and priests of celebrity worship.

Public radio has the most easily annoyed, persnickety, proudly upper-middlebrow listeners in the world, and I think I’m 99th percentile in all of those categories. So who better to start a blog solely for the purpose of bringing to light public radio’s broadcasting practices which range from great to silly to tone deaf to unprofessional/irresponsible?

For the purpose of selling recycled reports on CD, NPR touts its “Driveway Moments“, which they refer to as times when “rather than turn the radio off, you stay in your car to hear the piece to the end.”

For the purposes of this blog, I’d like to expand the in-car listening imagery by introducing the concept of “Airbag moments“. Those are the times when someone on Public Radio says something so ridiculous that your airbag is suddenly deployed when you beat your fist on the steering wheel as you rant at the radio.

Note: Some confuse my use of “airbag” with an air-sickness bag. As I explained, I am talking about an automobile airbag, but feel free to interpret it either way depending on your level of annoyance.

So I invite all you NPRs (Nerdy Peevish Radicals (c)(tm) Airbag Moments) to join me in ranting about a few of your least favorite things. Co-bloggers welcome, inquire within.