The ratings of National Public Radio have been doing fairly well in recent years as the huge Baby Boomer audience loses interest in music as they age. NPR likes to publish their audience demographics to attract advertisers or sponsors or whatever they call them (e.g., "NPR listeners are extraordinarily well-educated.") What NPR won't tell us in anywhere I've been able to find online is how few NPR listeners are Hispanic / Latino. This factsheet from NPR implies that 14% of NPR listeners are aren't white, with the largest minority group being blacks at 5% (blacks make up 31% of the audience for NPR jazz shows, which is nice to hear).
So, my best guess is that the answer to the title question is: Not many.
NPR is kind of a business, kind of an identity politics totem dedicated to making America more NPRish. NPR claims to have 28 million listeners, so how many more will the next 50 million Hispanics add? Maybe a million? Now the way I tend to look at things, adding 50 million people to the country over the next couple of decades and adding only 1 million NPR listeners makes the country less NPRish. But nobody at NPR seems to see it that way. Am I missing something?
NPR is kind of a business, kind of an identity politics totem dedicated to making America more NPRish. NPR claims to have 28 million listeners, so how many more will the next 50 million Hispanics add? Maybe a million? Now the way I tend to look at things, adding 50 million people to the country over the next couple of decades and adding only 1 million NPR listeners makes the country less NPRish. But nobody at NPR seems to see it that way. Am I missing something?
Duh. Public Radio is #44 on Stuff White People Like.
ReplyDelete42
ReplyDeleteI guess the Hispanic correspondents' annoying manner of reading a story in a generic American English accent but pronouncing any Spanish names (including their own when signing off) with a heavily Spanish accent hasn't drawn 'em in.
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot. Like every other ostentatious display of third world "cultural authenticity," that's to give well-off liberal whites warm & fuzzy feelings about how cosmopolitan they are.
You'd think Asians would make up 4% or the second largest listening group.
ReplyDeleteThis happens to me all the time: I'll be waiting at a stoplight and a car full of Mexicans will pull up beside me, making my car vibrate with the bass tones of Scott Simon thumping out of giant speakers.
ReplyDeletequestion 2. what % of the staff is 'scots-irish'
ReplyDeleteIf blacks are 5%, and asians punch above their weight (they're 5% of the population) by a margin of 2:1 because of how they skew educationally, then yes, the answer is roughly zero.
ReplyDeleteI'm Black and I've been listening to NPR since I was 15. I loved all of the international music played on it. Later on I tried to catch "A Prairie Home Companion" whenever I could.
ReplyDeleteNPR is pretty much run by Eskimoes.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of scots-irish.. i was looking at a musuem's gift shop and noticed they had a 'holiday' section and a hannakah sub-section (no Christmas section) I was thinking .. since jews don't really 'celebrate' hannkaha -its more an anti-Christmas - my guess is that most of these trinkets/cards/items are produced at a huge loss and no one really buys them.
ReplyDeleteAsians gotta be lovin on NPR as generally well-educated, liberal, urban dwellers living in coastal elite enclaves. No doubt they make up most the unattributed 9%.
ReplyDeleteI see NPR doing even less well than major bookstores in large overwhelming Hispanic areas like El Paso (none). At least at B&N you could get an overpriced snack and buy mainstream kids books and toys - things minimally relevant to their lives.
I ran across NPR's programming attempt to reach out to the Hispanic community called AltLatino (I guess they thought Latina was too far a PC bridge to cross at this time).
It was a parody of well-meaning but clueless elite SWPLdom. Despite the authentico surnames, the hosts were some metrosexual eunuch and a woman's studies grad vainly trying to create a pseudo-cerebral college radio mystic about Hispanic world music. Not even SWPLs, who are the only ones who actually buy US marketed world music, even listen to that crap.
Does NPR know what is overwhelmingly popular in Hispanic media like Univision? It's not hard: syrupy telanovellas that make US soap operas look like Shakespeare, futbol and low-brow burlesque-like comedy (with adults dressed and acting as children) and talk/variety shows like Sabado Gigante filled people doing foolish things surrounded by big chested bimbos in short, tight dresses.
With these programming decisions, NPR would be better off with a Spanish language-program called !Ay Mis Bolas! (English: Ow, My Balls) in radio format.
When they start running soap operas about dusky housemaids who marry handsome European-looking rich men after many ups and downs, or stories about superheroes, maybe they'll get a Mexican audience.
ReplyDeleteThey can rope in the Dominicans with baseball.
As it is, your gardener pays income tax so your feckless graduate student children can be faintly amused by "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me."
Another reason to mourn for the Old Republic.
Hmmm... 14% non-white, less than half of that black. Sounds like the demographics of the Twin Cities. No wonder we're such a hotbed of public radio. Everyone wants our programs.
ReplyDeleteMinnesota Public Radio has two stations here, one for classical music, the other for news. If the local programming is liberal, it's closer to Adlai Stevenson than to Ward Churchill. MPR doesn't need the apologies NPR gets at the end of Cah Tawk.
Over in the UK we dont have NPR, we have the BBC funded largely by the TV license. Every household with a functioning TV is supposed to pay.
ReplyDeleteThe BBC is quite tough about enforcement and from time to time one will see cases where people are prosecuted for not paying.
What I would be fascinated to know is what the demographic breakdown of non-payers is.
I rather suspect it would show the most vibrant members of society being the worst offfenders. i.e. the groups the BBC covers for most assiduously.
The best payers being the white middle class types.
Im wondering how to frame a FOI request to tease out this kind of data.
Mr. Evergreen, you seem like a nice, young man: Please leave before it's too late.
ReplyDeleteAs bad as the lack of book reading is in Mexico, it's apparently getting worse: Chilling Mystery: Why don't Mexicans Read Books.
ReplyDeleteSubstitute NPR for Books in the article and you'll understand what NPR is up against.
Competitive pressures in a country where 3,000 copies sold makes a bestseller have pushed 4 out of every 10 bookstores in Mexico out of business over the past 10 years...
Meanwhile, from 2001 to 2004, roughly 10 percent of all publishers have shut down. And despite myriad efforts to encourage reading and thus increase book buying, the crisis shows no sign of abating.
Despite having three times the population of Argentina, Mexico produces about 2,000 fewer titles each year. There are roughly 500 bookstores in Mexico, which translates into one for every 200,000 Mexicans, compared to a ratio of one to 35,000 in the US and one to 12,000 in Spain....
"Mexico simply has never had a culture favorable to reading," says Elsa Ramirez, a library-studies researcher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico.
But, some argue, the European countries already had a public predisposed to reading. "For the majority of Mexicans, bookstores are a completely alien place," says Jesus Anaya, editorial director at publishing house Grupo Planeta.
As it is, your gardener pays income tax so your feckless graduate student children can be faintly amused... --Grumpy Old Man
ReplyDeleteNobody's paying a gardener enough to crack the income-tax threshold. I think you mean "landscape architect".
As a classical music buff living in San Francisco, I have noticed that both the symphony and the opera attract a reasonable number of black fans. When they put on free shows in the summer I would estimate that 5% of the attendees are black (which is comparable to their share of the population). (It' interesting to contrast that to the Big SWPL festival (Hardly Strictly Bluegrass) which no blacks attend). By contrast at the many classical events I have attended the only hispanics I have seen are working menial jobs. I am hoping that the new conductor of the LA Symphony-Dudamel could excite some interest in them since he is from Venezuela but I am not overly optimistic.
ReplyDeleteNPR even has a few shows catering to Latinos:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/series/alt-latino/
I wonder what the ratings are and who listens to them.
@anon 12/7/11 10:05 PM
ReplyDeleteyet the BBC hates and despises the english people, culture and religion.
"Mr. Evergreen, you seem like a nice, young man: Please leave before it's too late"
ReplyDeleteWhy leave? Just asking.
Steve said, "(blacks make up 31% of the audience for NPR jazz shows, which is nice to hear)."
ReplyDeleteSo that's why Marian McFartland's jazz "show" remains...! Here I was thinking her longevity was just NPR's attempt to change the accent of the country to sounds of death warmed over, a la Marian, Diane Rheims, etc.
(Sarcasm aside, in what other universe, alternate reality, or even Mexico City would Rheims be allowed near a microphone much less the circle jerk of talking heads in D. C.?)
Bet the majority of the black listeners are African/Caribbean cab drivers.
ReplyDeleteEvery NPR story about illegal immigration ("immigration" in NPR-speak) involves some perfect Hispanic kid who has a 4.5 gpa and 1350 on her SATs and her one and only dream since she was 5 is to be a doctor. And of course all those who oppose "immigration" are white supremacists. Literally, every story is like that.
ReplyDeleteMaybe NPR will fix this by providing some Spanish language shows and Mariachi music.
ReplyDeleteNPR is one of those things that are elitist in nature but egalitarian in principles.
ReplyDelete"since jews don't really 'celebrate' hannkaha -its more an anti-Christmas"
ReplyDeleteWe celebrate Hannukah because it's an anti-Christmas.
A bit OT, but in Columbus there are two current-events talk shows for black people. One is a nationally-aired NPR show that's basically a black blogger roundtable. Four people care.
ReplyDeleteThe other is a ghetto-themed call-in show called Street Soldiers. They take calls, throw out a lot of "we gotta do better" rhetoric, go crazy with the ghetto slang, call out child molesters in their community, and talk politics roughly once a year.
Huge ratings.
My wife and I play a game. Each morning we wake to NPR and listen for about 5-10 min before we get up. We keep track of the number of "news reports" about: (1) Jews/Israel/the Holocaust/anti-Semitism. (2) Slavery/Minorities/Blacks. (3) Gays/homosexuals. On most days, NPR can score at least 2 in 10 min, and sometimes even 3 or 4. Today, we had a perfect trifecta, with all 3 subjects one after another.
ReplyDeleteI’m a news junkie, and I’ve listened to NPR for 40 years. I soon came to realize that there was a report about Israel/Jews/Holocaust/anti-Semitism DAILY, and sometimnes as many as 3 reports about this subject!! Does anyone know why NPR is totally obsessed with this subject? For example are most of NPR’s staff Jewish or something?
Thanks, Darwin. Back when I listened, which was before they became a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Obama Campaign 2008, I cringed every time at the over-the-top way Mandalit Del Barco said her name at the the end of the perfectly-enunciated, J-school-trained, middle-American accented report she just did! If she was doing a story on Nee-ha-rah-wah, I'd shut off the radio...
ReplyDeleteNPR-ites aren't interested in increasing their numbers--they're interested in increasing their power. And since illegalos vote Democrat (don't fool yourself into thinking they don't vote in California), thus more illegalos is a GOOD thing. A GOOD thing.
ReplyDeleteI have long wondered what right wing radio / television / politics would look like if the money was taken out of it. In the SF Bay Area where I live, we have KPFA Pacifica in Berkeley. They were the first ever non commercial radio station in the country. They are an extremely independent (in a Stalinist sense) left leaning organization that produces both the best and worst of broadcasting. Its programming ranges from free form music (Grateful Dead, Gospel, Blues) where the host plays whatever he feels like to brazenly radical black / Chicano liberation shows to news broadcasts which sound like they are produced by the Comintern. Whatever one might think of them they have far more leeway to do and say what they will compared to the rest of public or commercial broadcasting.
ReplyDeleteBy separating advertisers and wealthy donors from the producers of an alt-right radio or television station would be radical in a way that would far more resemble what we see on the internet. Steve, even you might finally get the fame and attention you have long deserved. With no one looking over either their left or right shoulders the public could be exposed to all the politically incorrect stuff we enjoy. It would truly be a breath of fresh air (my apologies to Terry Gross) and great listening. The Neo-Cons, Business Round Table, and Evangelicals would be greatly diminished and there could finally be subjects aired which heretofore have been totally off limits. I guess one can only dream.
"NPR even has a few shows catering to Latinos:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.npr.org/series/alt-latino/
I wonder what the ratings are and who listens to them."
Whites wanting to be enriched with Latino culture from the comfort of their own homes.
I guess the Hispanic correspondents' annoying manner of reading a story in a generic American English accent but pronouncing any Spanish names (including their own when signing off) with a heavily Spanish accent hasn't drawn 'em in.
ReplyDeleteAmong younger people, especially men, that's called "being a pretentious douche".
I can speak Spanish, among other foreign languages, and my accents are quite good (so I'm told by native speakers). But I make it a point to pronounce Spanish names in an American English accent while I'm speaking English. For that matter, I always say "Bombay" instead of "Mumbai", and so forth; especially since an Indian guy I met from Bombay always referred to his city with the traditional moniker. I do what I can to stick it to liberal SWPL behavior.
94
ReplyDelete"blacks make up 31% of the audience for NPR jazz shows, which is nice to hear"
ReplyDeleteIt is not immediately apparent to me why that is nice to hear.
Blacks consider jazz one of "their" musical genres so the fact that blacks make up 31% of the NPR audience for such shows is no nicer than the fact that 90+% of blacks voted for "their" [i.e., "black"] candidate in the 2008 presidential election.
I've always found Morning Edition and All Things Considered to be pretty "down the middle," so to speak... most of the time. Same with the PBS NewsHour which appears on our NPR station, and This American Life.
ReplyDeleteBy contrast, in the afternoons, there's "Tell Me More" with Michel Martin, of which I cannot stand a single second. Here's the capsule description:
"Capturing the headlines, issues and pleasures relevant to multicultural life in America, NPR's Tell Me More focuses on the way we live, intersect and collide in a diverse world."
Exactly.
Speaking of SWPL, there was a great moment in The Wire (#85) where the character Bodie, a junior gang-banger, is in the car listening to Prairie Home Companion on the way to or from an execution or something. Hilarious.
Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk are just too much for me to bear.
Mr. Evergreen, you seem like a nice, young man: Please leave before it's too late.
ReplyDeleteHe seems well-prepared to me. He's already got the "never answer tough questions directly" thing down pat.
Don't know about hispanics, but I've noticed that among lefties, NPR gets mostly the over $100K crowd. Lefties who somehow forgot to sell out listen to Pacifica stations, not NPR.
ReplyDeleteScott Simon thumping out of giant speakers.
ReplyDeleteYeah, the whole NPR "gentleness" thing wouldn't make any sense to Mexicans. They don't have those bad memories of Duane from 8th grade.
Steve the whole point of NPR/SWPL is the destruction of the group they HATE HATE HATE: Ordinary White people. Who remind them uncomfortably of the "un-cool" families and backgrounds most came from (trustafarians excepted). Indeed the burning desire to be accepted and embraced by rich hereditary elites such as say, Gloria Vanderbilt and son Anderson Cooper, drives a lot of this behavior.
ReplyDeleteThis is what happens when too much money and status not hammered down by society allows status-chasing to run wild. Any sensible society tamps that down somewhat (a bit of it is healthy, too much disastrous).
Add: David Mamet has called NPR "National Palestinian Radio." Being SWPL-ish, NPR does not like Israel and would rather it be absorbed by the United Colors of Benetton, NPR/SWPL being under a post-Christian debased Volk Marxism of PC/Multiculturalism where every society except White ones is "vibrant" and morally/spiritually superior (without that annoying figure of Christ or God).
ReplyDeletePolitico had a long story about the divisions among Democrats on Israel (and Jews). Absent: Blacks don't like either much, the SCLC a year after Goodman, Cheney, and Schwerner were murdered in Mississippi expelled all the non-Blacks (nearly all of them smart Jewish lawyers) and Black resentment of Jewish success in intellectual fields is obvious and pathetic. But among highly assimilated Jews themselves, the desire to be part of the post-Christian (irony alert there) elite in embracing utopia has led them to reject Israel as an annoying, embarrassing NATIONALIST reminder of an identity they'd rather forget.
Combined with high rates of intermarriage (Jews effectively will cease to exist in the US in a generation) and secularism, Jews among all have endorsed SWPL the most. While ironically Mexicans have endorsed them the least.
For whatever reason, Mexicans still like being Mexican, they're not ashamed of being Mexican, and acting like it. They listen to Mexican radio (apologies to Wall of Voodoo), watch Mexican TV, and if they can read, read Mexican newspapers. Jews? Seinfeld is an ode to SWPL-ism. Jerry and Elaine believe in ... nothing. In a show about nothing. Its all irony (though funny in poking fun at SWPL-ism).
"'Mr. Evergreen, you seem like a nice, young man: Please leave before it's too late.'
ReplyDeleteHe seems well-prepared to me. He's already got the 'never answer tough questions directly' thing down pat."
He's also got the "race man who insists on being treated as an individual who must be included" thing down pat.
They're falling over themselves responding to him in a thread on another blog on which he always takes a contrarian position. With a total inability to make any kind of solid argument, he's nevertheless managed to hijack a thread that could have been really worthwhile if they'd simply ignored him.
As it is, it's just another example of the tyranny of the individual, though I doubt any of the participants can see that.
If I may change the subject to HGTV, I'm detecting a change this season. In the past, every show featured a gay or ethnic couple looking to buy a home or decorate their house.
ReplyDeleteThis season I've actually seen some white heterosexual couples. My jaw dropped. I'd forgotten they exist.
Does anyone know why NPR is totally obsessed with this subject? For example are most of NPR’s staff Jewish or something?
ReplyDeleteIt's most of their contributors: older, affluent Jews.
NPR is getting to be the height of unintended self-parody. It's like Manhattan, on the radio; basically a wealthy, liberal Jewish playground.
"I guess the Hispanic correspondents' annoying manner of reading a story in a generic American English accent but pronouncing any Spanish names (including their own when signing off) with a heavily Spanish accent hasn't drawn 'em in."
ReplyDeleteThis has become standard fare across almost the entire news media, sometimes it's even more with local Hispanic TV and radio personalities. A straight-forward and common last name like Hernandez mutates into something over-hyphenated nearly unrecognizable.
"He seems well-prepared to me. He's already got the "never answer tough questions directly" thing down pat."
ReplyDeleteThen I guess my legacy is cemented.
I would guess that the whole Mexicans-don't-read issue relates to the sublimation of the individual to the group (such as seen in Mexicans doing all right in team sports such as soccer but not in individual sports such as track or swimming, and acting as mindless robots in service to the Catholic church).
ReplyDeleteI once was involved in a program at a major U.S. research university that helped faculty develop collaborations with their counterparts at major Mexican universities. I will never forget how astonished I was to hear a young, upper class Mexican administrator state that if students did not learn, the professor was entirely to blame for not being sufficiently engaging or appealing. I remember thinking that that is why Mexicowill never be anything but a third world cesspool.
"blacks make up 31% of the audience for NPR jazz shows, which is nice to hear"
ReplyDeleteIt is not immediately apparent to me why that is nice to hear.
Probably because they aren't listening to rap. Steve has hopes for black Americans.
Here's another dyed in the wool conservative who has listened to NPR for close to three decades. Some of their reporting is tripe -- this evening, as a matter of fact I had to retune when they started on how the black middle class has been hit far harder than whites by this recession -- but sometimes they have longer stories about interesting topics that just hit it out of the park.
ReplyDeleteIt is amusing that they practice stereotyping by having the 'right' corespondent reporting on stories that have even a whiff of ethnicity (their current reporter in Africa, Fabia Quist Arton (sp?) is simply awful in her reporting. On the other hand their Mediterranean-area reporter, Sylvia Poggioli, is the best on-scene reporter I've ever heard on radio or television.
Steve, for God's sake! The NPRers are not asleep at the wheel. They hate Christianity in general and Catholics especially. They don't even want them listening. I've done impressionistic "research" on this at several bars near Lubbock. Some Hispanics DO like to listen to NPR (vigorous males that don't understand English). It's those mellow female New Yorkish voices that charm them--the sort of female qualities in New York that Thomas (Clayton) Wolfe wrote about. Steve, the solution (if you're interested ) to vastly amplifying all manner of persons listening to NPR is to use technology and some legal finesse to manage to have audiences in bars off campus and in other locations listen live to NPR while being able to yell back at it from among the half-sober people crowding the bar. People will pay for a license , permit, to yell back at the thing IF IF the NPR broadcast can be "freeze framed" ,as it were, so that when the yelled out sarcasms and jibes subside momentarily, the damn National Pubic Radio bilge continues intact with no omissions, the broadcast merely having been "freeze framed" for, say, 15 seconds. This obviously means that a full bar of booze primed majority West Texas intellekshuls can yell back at this
ReplyDeletes*** so that a two hour discharge by Milessa Bloch and Mira Liasson, et all, will take in a West Texas bar as long as four hours to play itself out with West Texas counterpoint woven into it. Hell, these extraterrestials at NPR could bathe daily in champagne from the increase in listeners/revenues. Got to get me another drink right now. Take the ball and run with it, Steve.
NPR news is in general, anecdote. I'm sorry, I meant to say "the human interest angle to put a face on the people we read about in the news."
ReplyDeleteThey are master manipulators in this regard, installing opinions that listeners think they have come up with on their own.
Related. I received this article at the hospital today. http://www.hhnmag.com/hhnmag/HHNDaily/HHNDailyDisplay.dhtml?id=3160005086
ReplyDeleteFor all its PC-ness, it does show some surprising insights, but I was particularly drawn to a quote at the end: "Diversity is not going away. Maybe your institution or organization is located in a white suburb, but many members of minority groups are ambitious and entrepreneurial, and even if they don't make it to financial success themselves, most of them work very hard to see that their children will. And one day, you may wake up and find 10,000 Somalis in your service area, or an African-American neighborhood full of corporate executives, or a bunch of third-generation Latina moms with doctorates."
I would really like to find some place to get a bet down on that claim. Free money for me.
"Blacks consider jazz one of "their" musical genres so the fact that blacks make up 31% of the NPR audience for such shows is no nicer than the fact that 90+% of blacks voted for "their" [i.e., "black"] candidate in the 2008 presidential election."
ReplyDelete90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson.
Are white people racist for enjoying country music?
""Blacks consider jazz one of "their" musical genres so the fact that blacks make up 31% of the NPR audience for such shows is no nicer than the fact that 90+% of blacks voted for 'their' [i.e., "black"] candidate in the 2008 presidential election.'
ReplyDelete90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson."
You mean the party of government hand-outs? They sure have. No surprise there.
"Are white people racist for enjoying country music?"
No. Because among white people, you find a fair number who like music they can't hope to claim as "theirs" i.e. salsa, world music, African-American music, etc. Blacks seldom bother with any music they can't claim as "theirs".
"Blacks seldom bother with any music they can't claim as "theirs"
ReplyDeleteThe great thing I've discovered about you, Sportette, is that if I every want to know something about black people, I can just ask.
The great thing I've discovered about you, Sportette, is that if I every want to know something about black people, I can just ask.
ReplyDeleteHey, that was actually lol!
Then I guess my legacy is cemented.
ReplyDeleteTwo in a row!
"90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson."
ReplyDeleteNot true, I believe Richard Nixon got 15% and 18% of the vote the two times he ran, and BOB DOLE of all people received 12% of the black vote.
"You mean the party of government hand-outs?"
No the Democratic party is the party of government handouts to people, the Republican party, to companies; and by the way, MLK lived his entire life, and died a registered Republican.
How the African-American presidential vote split through the years between the Democratic and the Republican candidates (Winner is in bold type):
Year
Democrat
Black support
Republican
Black support
1984 Walter Mondale 90%
Ronald Reagan 9%
1988 Michael Dukakis 90%
George H.W. Bush 10%
1992 Bill Clinton 83%
George H.W. Bush 10%
1996 Bill Clinton 84%
Bob Dole 12%
2000 Al Gore 90%
George W. Bush 9%
Sources: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, CNN. Reported by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY.
"Hey, that was actually lol!"
ReplyDeleteHilarious.
http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/01/23/20-being-an-expert-on-your-culture/
My wife and I play a game. Each morning we wake to NPR and listen for about 5-10 min before we get up. We keep track of the number of "news reports" about: (1) Jews/Israel/the Holocaust/anti-Semitism. (2) Slavery/Minorities/Blacks. (3) Gays/homosexuals. On most days, NPR can score at least 2 in 10 min, and sometimes even 3 or 4. Today, we had a perfect trifecta, with all 3 subjects one after another.
ReplyDeletenorman finkelstien monitored the NYT from the mid to late nineties - the only news item more reported than the holocaust was the weather column.
"They're falling over themselves responding to him in a thread on another blog on which he always takes a contrarian position. With a total inability to make any kind of solid argument, he's nevertheless managed to hijack a thread that could have been really worthwhile if they'd simply ignored him.
ReplyDeleteAs it is, it's just another example of the tyranny of the individual, though I doubt any of the participants can see that"
Actually, I am just an individual who feels that it is more important to judge individuals by their character, and not by the deeds of persons who happen to look like them.
"No the Democratic party is the party of government handouts to people, the Republican party, to companies; and by the way, MLK lived his entire life, and died a registered Republican"
ReplyDeleteIf that assesment is true, then Democrats and Republicans are basically the same thing.
"If that assesment is true, then Democrats and Republicans are basically the same thing"
ReplyDeleteWhoa, you've got to slow down, Son; I've never been a mentor before, this is new territory for me.
No the Democratic party is the party of government handouts to people, the Republican party, to companies; and by the way, MLK lived his entire life, and died a registered Republican.
ReplyDeleteNo, both the Dem and Rep are both parties of government handouts to many big businesses:
* finance (bailouts, subsidies)
* military industrialist (waste, outsourcing, no-bids, etc)
* healthcare (subsidizing and inflating costs)
* pharma (non-negotiable pricing for pharm benefits)
* hi-tech (H1B)
* education bubble (subsidizing bubble, also helps big finance)
* housing (everything from tax code to finance to construction)
* media (ignore or dismantle anti-monopolistic regulations)
* etc.
Dems and Reps differ only slightly in that Dems favor big law and Rep favor non-glam big corp like fossil fuels.
Dems and Reps are identical on all the big issues of the day and differ only in degree: financial giveaways to elite financiers under the guise of "national debt" created from "bailouts", "free" trade, open boarders, military interventions and foreign wars, regulator capture and corruption, etc.
That's not change, that's even more of the same.
Nerd question: They nail the nonpaying TV viewers in England with "detector vans". Wouldn't any person somewhat knowledgeable in electronics come up with the obvious answer: shield the RF section of the monitor, or use a shielded TV tuner digital module and feed a computer monitor?
ReplyDeleteWhat your missing Steve is the liberal tendency to believe in the malleability of human nature, in particular the denial of race differences.
ReplyDeleteWhites and hispanics have different NPR viewing pattern not because of anything peculiar to their ethnicity. Liberals thus engage in "missionary immigration": They invite Hispanics under the belief that proximity to NPR listening-and-loving liberals will change them.
"Not true, I believe Richard Nixon got 15% and 18% of the vote the two times he ran, and BOB DOLE of all people received 12% of the black vote."
ReplyDeleteYeah I was exaggerating slightly.
I think Bob Dole was probably helped by having Jack Kemp on the ticket, who was fairly popularly among blacks, for a Republican.
Sorry, Anon 5:50, the BBC World Service is still the gold standard for foreign reporting.
ReplyDelete"Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteI think Bob Dole was probably helped by having Jack Kemp on the ticket, who was fairly popularly among blacks, for a Republican."
Yeah, Kemp had showered with more blacks than any other Republican, as it was famously put by Newt Gingrich. The fact remains that blacks vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats, when they bother to vote at all, not withstanding the usual smoke-screen of b*llshit emitted by that water-powered-car driving Journalism-school grad known as "Truth", who thinks that pointing out the difference between 90% and 88% (in one election) makes him clever. "Truth" can be counted on to dissemble and obfuscate, but never actually just state the plain truth.
Regarding Jews and NPR. Not only are most of their big donors Jewish, the on-air and behind the scenes talent is dominated by jews. You only have to hear the names, or look at the website.
ReplyDeleteThe other key demographic for NPR is old and middle aged teachers and "education workers". They're one reason why NPR is so relentlessly middle-brow and liberal. Take the average New York Times reader - drop 15 IQ points - and you got NPR's audience.
I call NPR "National Yiddish Radio."
ReplyDeleteNPR had this big "Yiddish Radio" project a while back. I was listening one day and they were bragging that this was the biggest, most expensive special project they had ever done. That pretty much says it all about who runs NPR and what their priorities are.
A typical NPR show is a Jewish host interviewing a Jewish author who wrote a book about another Jewish author who wrote books about Jews.
http://www.npr.org/programs/atc/features/2002/yiddish/
"'blacks make up 31% of the audience for NPR jazz shows, which is nice to hear"
ReplyDeleteIt is not immediately apparent to me why that is nice to hear.'
Probably because they aren't listening to rap. Steve has hopes for black Americans."
Yes, that is where he and I differ. Then again, I spent years living and working in a low-income, racially-mixed neighborhood. I was hopeful before that experience. I'm not now--despite the fact that overall I had a better time with my black friends. The only people I kept in touch with after I moved are black.
What mr evergreen doesn't understand is that a person can really like--even love--individuals from a group s/he recognizes as a threat to his or her own group. That's enough to make most people explain away or just ignore the threat. It's hard to meet individuals you'd like to befriend, knowing that they're the exception and that most of their brethren wish you no good and might even harm you as casually as they'd swat a fly. And if you're a person whose natural tendency is to take every individual on a case by case basis, it's even harder.
Your comment gave me a real pang.
"My wife and I play a game each
ReplyDeletemoring" (re NPR) Amazing. Thanks. I will actually do this. NPR's
flypaper receptivity to these matters you mention is obvious enough to most folks at least half way on the right side of the Bell Curve, but but the extent of the saturation is very revealing. Again, thanks.
People pronounce their names like they're actually pronounced. If I'm chatting with someone in Spanish, and they ask where I'm from or what my name is, I pronounce those things in English, since that's how they're pronounced. I assume the same is true of someone like Mandalit Del Barco--she pronounces her name the way it's actually pronounced. That doesn't seem pretentious to me--it would seem kind of silly to do it the other way. (Though I'll stick with common Spanish renamings of places ("Nueva York") sometimes, perhaps the same way an Italian will say he's from Rome instead of Roma.)
ReplyDeleteThe fun version of this is something I've noticed Chinese often do--apparently, most of their names are hopeless for non-Chinese speakers to say right, so it seems like most Chinese I know who live in an English speaking country just choose some reasonably common English name that's reasonably close to some part of their name. Better to be correctly called Sharon or Felix than be unpronounceable, I guess.
What your missing Steve is the liberal tendency to believe in the malleability of human nature, in particular the denial of race differences.
ReplyDeleteWhites and hispanics have different NPR viewing pattern not because of anything peculiar to their ethnicity. Liberals thus engage in "missionary immigration": They invite Hispanics under the belief that proximity to NPR listening-and-loving liberals will change them.
Kinda like how Rotgut's always telling us Ashkenazis will disappear into panmixia in the USA Real Soon Now, Israel will be as swamped by aliens as the USA is Real Soon Now, Japan (and China) will be overrun by foreigners Real Soon Now, etc.
A typical NPR show is a Jewish host interviewing a Jewish author who wrote a book about another Jewish author who wrote books about Jews.
ReplyDeleteI call that Journalism.
"not withstanding the usual smoke-screen of b*llshit emitted by that water-powered-car driving Journalism-school grad known as "Truth", who thinks that pointing out the difference between 90% and 88% (in one election) makes him clever. "Truth" can be counted on to dissemble and obfuscate, but never actually just state the plain truth."
ReplyDeleteI did state the plain truth, when I pointed out that Dole got 12% of the vote.
"I'm not now--despite the fact that overall I had a better time with my black friends. The only people I kept in touch with after I moved are black."
ReplyDeleteNow you see Kylie, some of my best friends are white, too.
I love the NPR Game, because sometimes you can get a two-fer, or even a three-fer. For example, a report about gay Hispanics would be worth 2 points (a two-fer). The recent NPR report about the fact that many of the homeless are gays should have been a two-fer, but it was so over-the-top, even for NPR that I gave it an honorary three-fer.
ReplyDeleteThe best ever NPR report, which I awarded the coveted once-in-a-lifetime NPR Exemplatorious-left-o-libermoungous Award of PENTA-PERFECTA (Trade-mark), was their report about gay, African immigrants in Israel. A report like that is like finding an honest politician. It will never happen again.
I'm proud I heard it, and one day I'll be able to tell my grandchildren about that magic NPR monemt.
yet the BBC hates and despises the english people, culture and religion.
ReplyDeleteThat was kind of my point, Im sorry if I dodnt make it clear.
Just as the LA Times has been cheerleader for immigrants who dont read it and who have driven out the people who do...the BBC is a cheerleader for immigrants who wont pay its license fee and are driving out the people who do.
I suspect in the future the BBC will make greater and greater demands of its financial supporters while earnestly targetting its prgramming at the coming non-white (and non-paying) majority.
At some point this equation will break down and another SWPL institution will come face to face with the reality of the multicultural experiment it had so eagerly championed
"Truth said...
ReplyDeleteI did state the plain truth, when I pointed out that Dole got 12% of the vote."
This was in response to a post where someone claimed that blacks vote 90%+ for the democrats, which is, on average, quite true.
More obfuscation, as usual, from you. You never write anything, other than to make things less clear. But then, you have no respect for the truth.
>It's those mellow female New Yorkish voices that charm them<
ReplyDeleteYou must be joking.
They sound like perpetually smiling kindergarten teachers.
And the men (very rare) sound like extraterrestrials huffing helium.
You are a PHD, right?
ReplyDeleteOK, here you go:
12%> Less than 10%.
This renders the statement; "90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson" Untrue, doesn't it?
That makes my response TRUTH doesn't it?
Are you sure you passed Differential Equations?
"Actually, I am just an individual who feels that it is more important to judge individuals by their character, and not by the deeds of persons who happen to look like them."
ReplyDeleteIf you are an individual who judges by character and not the fact that they look like you, I will believe it when I see you post something critical of blacks sometime.
"Truth said...
ReplyDelete12%> Less than 10%."
The poster in question wasn't talking about one election, you nitwit, but rather the general trend. Do you deny that blacks vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats? Do you deny that nighttime is generally dark?
You are a deceitful idiot.
Truth
ReplyDeleteSources: Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, CNN. Reported by Melanie Eversley, USA TODAY.
I could find little historical data regarding black voting patterns for the dates Truth gave. All the sources I found ultimately derive from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies whose mission is:
seeks to “improve the socioeconomic status of black Americans and other minorities; expand their effective participation in the political and public policy arenas
The Joint Center helped form the National Conference of Black Mayors and the National Caucus of Black State Legislators... also formed the Committee of Policy for Racial Justice
An important part of that mission would be to downplay the extreme Democratic block partisanship of blacks to make them seem more relevant and reachable by both parties.
Let's just say the numbers Truth cites from this organization error on the upperbound for pro-GOP. I have a difficult time believing that 10% of blacks voted for Bush Sr. instead of 90% Dukakis and 83% Clinton (the first black president). Hell, I don't believe their stat that only 95% of blacks voted for Obama in 2008.
"If you are an individual who judges by character and not the fact that they look like you, I will believe it when I see you post something critical of blacks sometime"
ReplyDeleteActually I have posted things like that. I have flat out admitted that there are crime issues in the Black community. I even have something on my blog. Look up "wtf is acting white"? on Evergreen Journal and another blog entry about Black people being afraid to "snitch". I am basically trying to do more of what Bill Cosby is doing. He is doing it out of love for Black people, because he wants them to do better, to respect and act on the legacy that persons in my grandparents' generation were willing to die for.
I judge by character, not race. I would hope and expect other people would do the same.
"You are a deceitful idiot."
ReplyDeleteLMAO, Grassshopper, why am I "deceitful" or an "idiot", either one for posting a FACT? Explain this to me, I'm having difficulty here with the concept.
"The poster in question wasn't talking about one election, you nitwit, but rather the general trend."
Yes, I get that. Once again the statement he posted:
"90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson"
Now either that statement is TRUE or it is UNTRUE right? I simply pointed out that it is UNTRUE. I don't get why this make you so angry.
Do you deny that blacks vote overwhelmingly for the Democrats?
No, I do not, as a matter of fact, I've written that numerous times. But the poster did not say that blacks vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, he said, once again...
"90+% of blacks have voted for every Democratic candidate since Lyndon Johnson"
Do you deny that nighttime is generally dark?
Generally yes, not in certain areas of the north pole at certain times though. Do you get how that works now?
Did you really, honestly, achieve a PHD? Tell the truth now, I promise I won't pass judgement on you, my friend.
"I have a difficult time believing that 10% of blacks voted for Bush Sr. instead of 90% Dukakis and 83% Clinton (the first black president)."
ReplyDeleteNow what in the holy hell does that mean?
Maybe you believe the stats from CNN.com
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
How about from the roper center:
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/elections/how_groups_voted/voted_04.html
How about from Gallup:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/107110/obamas-support-similar-kerrys-2004.aspx
Dude, YOU ARE WASTING MY FUCKING TIME!
Darfur Miller - the television "detector vans" were a huge hoax. The technology they were supposed to use was questionable at best and even if it did work then the fleet of seven or so vans would never be able to cover more than a minute part of the country. I don't think I've ever seen one, and they haven't been mentioned in any BBC or TV Licensing Board propaganda for many years. I think they realised people just didn't believe they were real so quietly let them drop. The checks are simply done using databases of occupied premises and the assumption that they all have a television. If you don't have a licence and purchase any tv equipment by any means other than cash, they pounce on you within days.
ReplyDeleteAs for the BBC, it is relentlessy, aggressively muticultural. Obviously it massively promotes our Vibrant communities (and whitewashes their misdeeds), but even within a strictly British context there is a very clear agenda: white, straight English men are being progressively erased from the picture. The Welsh, Scots and Irish (north and, inexplicaby, south) are always massively over-represented, and English women usually have some presence. But the only English men are the veterans who are Too Big To Fire. They are getting old though and will be gone in a few years. Increasingly the "English" men are from ethnic minorities (while the Scottish/Welsh/Irish ones - cherished and oppressed minorities that they are - are invariably white). All this is entirely deliberate, of course. If you complain, the response will be "of course we have English men on screen - just look at Okwuju/Sanjay/Vikram/Jermain. What, you're not a RACIST are you?".
"Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk are just too much for me to bear."
ReplyDeleteCar Talk? Car Talk is so funny, so useful and so true to life (real problems from real people with real cars) that it doesn't belong on NPR. It's also hosted by two hilariously funny white guys who don't try to be anything but what they are. Can you imagine any other ethnicity do this? Well-maybe an Hispanic. They're into cars.
They don't listen to NPR. They don't read books. Another thing they don't do? Write (or read) Wikipedia entries. The Wikipedia front page caught my attention awhile ago. It indicates the number of Wikipedia articles in various languages (number of native speakers in parenthesis):
ReplyDeleteEnglish: 3,816,000 (375 million)
German: 1,324,000 (98 million)
French: 1,181,000 (68-115 million)
Italian: 867,000 (62 million)
Spanish: 849,000 (329-400 million)
Polish: 848,000 (40 million)
Russian: 798,000 (144 million)
Japanese: 781,000 (122 million)
So there are almost as many Wikipedia articles in Polish as in Spanish, although there are 8-10 times as many native Spanish speakers as Polish speakers in the world.
It's hard to gauge precisely how many Wikipedia articles there should be for any given language. Some topics deserve coverage in any language, while obscure persons and cultural matters may only merit an article in their own. So I'll just go with "Spanish should probably have a hell of a lot more Wikipedia entries than Polish, German, or French."
"http://www.npr.org/series/alt-latino/
ReplyDeleteI wonder what the ratings are and who listens to them."
Nobody and nobody at NPR gives a flying damn. Including the people who produce the show.