#44 Public Radio
January 31, 2008 by mylosh
Summer: Who was that? It sounded like a girl.
Seth: Did it? Yeah. Well, sure. Because I’m listening to the radio. And This American Life is on. And so there’s a girl talking.
Summer: Is that that show where those hipster know-it-alls talk about how fascinating ordinary people are? God.
Leave it to a show about stereotypical white people, to actually explain how real white people act. The quote above is from the television show “The O.C.” and the character of Summer is making reference to the Public Radio show “This American Life”. White people have an uncanny ability to make the ordinary exciting and there is no better forum than public radio to best showcase this.
White people love stations like NPR (which is equivalent to listening to cardboard), and they love shows like This American Life and Democracy Now. This confuses immigrants from the third world. The see the need for radio as a source for sports, top 40 radio and traffic reports but they don’t quite understand why people who can afford TVs and have access to Youtube, would spend hours listening to the opinions of overeducated arts majors.
To explain this love for Public Radio, one only needs to summarize several previous posts on this website. Let’s use my friend Craig as an example. Craig has a high paying 9 to 5 so he feels guilty about all the problems in the world. To make himself feel better he likes being socially aware of things Post #18. However he spends most of his time indulging in the arts and going out for dinner so he has little time to devote to this. He found solace in The Daily Show Post#35, however he decided that life would be better if he did not have a TV post #28. Craig found an adequate replacement in Public Radio.
Craig loves Public Radio because it gave him an opportunity to download podcasts on his ipod Post #40. More important, was the fact that the download was free, because Public Radio is non profit Post #12. After Craig listens to people like Amy Goodman and David Sedaris Post#25, he feels like he is an expert Post#20 on the issues that they talk about like polygamy in third world or how awesome it is to watch an old lady pick apples. He brings up these topics to his bosses when they are having dinner or playing golf and next thing you know, he’s landed that promotion. All white people’s opinions are developed from Public Radio. So if you want to sound smart in front of White People, just bring up a topic that was discussed on Public Radio
Now if you truly want to understand White People I recommend listening to Episode 328 of This American Life, entitled “What I Learned from Television”. The episode was recorded in front of a live audience, and what is important here is not the content of the episode but rather the reaction from the audience. Listen to times when they laugh and when there is applause. Confusing? Yes it is! But we’re all here to figure out White People and somehow Public Radio has the answer.
(editor’s note: middle portion of the episode where the gay guy who doesn’t own a TV, talks about his one week experiment in TV watching, is an example of what White people love listening to.)
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Public radio provides news you won’t hear elsewhere. Hating public radio sounds like something FOX News would pull to garner viewers. Only it’s a shame that besides skewed reporting, they only report when hot white girls go missing, there’s some fire in some small town or the latest liberal outrage. Do you think anyone on FOX News reported about those terrorist attacks in Mumbai when they happened, what about Canada’s election in October? You could get some of the story from FOX/CNN or you could watch the news on a broadcast network or listen to NPR.
[...] #44 Public Radio [...]
Public radio is redeemed by a simple three letter acronym - BBC
Oh yes indeed, NPR is the only radio station I bother with because the rest of them fucking suck. I can’t stand the endless commercials, the shitty music, the canned playlists.
But even I hate This American Life and the veneration of the trivial and ordinary is exactly why. I have the same problem with contemporary literary fiction; maybe you CAN make something boring sound interesting, but you’re just showing off.
[...] on the Stuff White People Like site, but I heard founder Christian Lander on Radio National (#44) one day saying about the best thing you could do for a white person was cook them something from [...]
I’ve never listened to public radio. I need music!
I like public radio just because I like hearing people talk when I drive. It’s weird. I also listen to a lot of audiobooks, since I’m not one of those white people who appear to like classical music. It’s just not my thing.
I totally agree with the assessment of NPR. I hate the way white people (I’m white myself, but I don’t do this) listen to NPR and think that they have made the world a better place just by the simple act of tuning in. Let’s be honest NPR does a poor of reporting. Their better than most broadcast news on television, but that is hardly something to hang one’s hat on. Did they point out the holes in the Bush lies the Iraq war or question the wisdom of Greenspan when the Maestro was inflating the housing bubble that is now bursting and taking the world economy with it? Nope. NPR’s strong suit is their focus on the trivial. The more cultured and little known the better. People pledge so that they can get material to dispense at social gatherings and make themselves seem witty. Sword violence upswings in Scotland is my favorite completely irrelevant NPR story. I will never get the three minutes that I wasted listening to that story back.
I would separate Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now from this critique though. It is the spawn of Pacifica, and maybe a bunch of pompous white people like it as well. But fundamentally it is a better show, a trail blazing journalistic enterprise at its best. It isn’t under written by Big Oil and Big Pharma and it shows.
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