Apparently, at the end of February, the NPR program "Morning Edition" took the unusual move of airing four consecutive days of interviews with conservative thinkers in a segment they dubbed "Conversations with Conservatives."
The roster consisted of the Rev. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission; Grover Norquist, founder of Americans for Tax Reform; talk-radio host Glenn Beck; and David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union.
Each of these conservatives had their own focus, religion, taxes, and the like. But, as Harper discovered, "NPR listeners were not especially pleased in the aftermath of the broadcast segments."
According to NPR ombudsman Alicia Shepard, more than 60 angry e-mails and phone calls arrived at the network, calling the programming "shameful" and a "lovefest with radical, right-wing nuts." There were only a few, she said, that praised the series as "refreshing" and "articulate," among other things.
For his part, program host Steve Inskeep admitted he made a portion of his audience mad.
"We did annoy our listeners, but if we do our job right, we function as a personal intelligence agency for them. Hopefully, they hear allies and enemies and everybody in between. We have to learn from a wide range of people," he said.
So, are we supposed to celebrate how brave NPR is for this decision to give us the "other side"?
And, who can doubt that he meant "opposition research" as opposed to learning from a "wide range of people"? After all, his audience only cares about conservative opinion as far as it alerts them to the opinion of the enemy and not because it will "help" them "learn" anything useful with which they can make a balanced decision of their own.
And here is the main point. The NPR audience would not have gotten so exercised against this scant few hours that NPR devoted to a conservative viewpoint if that audience hadn't become assured by past programming that they wouldn't be accosted by those views inimical to leftist group think.
NPR may have seemed surprised by the negative response to their foray to the right, but no one who has heard the constantly left leaning content of NPR should be. After all, when one creates an audience based on programming that is just so, one should not be surprised when programming that deviates from that past record upsets the regulars.
Imagine, if you will, that a stadium full of baseball fans were to take their seats only to find that a football game had begun? There might be a few disgruntled fans in the stands at that rate.
So, NPR shouldn’t be so surprised when their audience settles in for their daily, left-wing indoctrination programming and lo and behold an eeeevil conservative’s opinions are wafting out of the radio to assault those shocked listeners’ delicate eardrums.
No wonder they got mad!
But just remember this last thing. The taxes of ALL of America’s citizens is paying for this left-wing indoctrination, not just that tax money from those left-wing Americans who support NPR.
