Upon learning that funding for National Public Radio will be sliced from the federal budget I danced a little jig in celebration, cracked open a quart of Schlitz Malt Liquor and said “Whee.”
Next I took a couple big gulps and said “What Took So Long?”
There are 150,000 AM-FM radio stations, along with about 450 satellite radio channels in the United States. The world is host to more than 40 million podcasts with more than 500 million listeners. There are additional thousands of news-providing webcasts and online platforms.
Of all the news sources in this vast menu of choices, I can think of only one that requires taxpayers like you and me to reach for our checkbooks every year to fund the audio toxins broadcast by KZYX and thousands more NPR outlets. We aren’t forced to listen to NPR, but we sure do have to pay for it.
These government-funded infoganda sources offer a daily gruel of Democrat-approved news. It’s fine for the country’s 25% of progressive listeners, but the rest of us are forced to steer around its tedious, turgid reports and analyses.
Conservative voices (and listeners) are completely shut out. Does this fit your definition of Taxation Without Representation?
But don’t take my word for it.
Here’s a tiny piece of a blistering essay from a 25-year NPR veteran, Business Editor Uri Berliner, who outlines the organization’s “descent into rigid partisan ideology.” Says he: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
(Note: Predictably, Mr. Berliner is no longer employed by National Public Radio.)
Me? I don’t care if someone tells me Joe Biden is sharp-witted and hardworking, or that Donald Trump is Hitler. But why should I have to pay for either? After all, I have Adam Schiff for ongoing disinformation (although I pay his salary too).
A recent Ukiah Daily Journal editorial in support of NPR pointed out that federal funding for National Public Radio “is not under direct authority of the executive branch; the purpose of this arrangement was to keep public media institutions truly public … preserving their independence from political forces.”
Well now.
If the “arrangement” designed to guarantee independence and inoculate it from political forces were any less effective, NPR would be broadcast from Obama’s living room with Nancy Pelosi and Bernie Sanders as news anchors.
There’s an NPR franchise in Mendocino County, and it never fails to live down to our expectations. KZYX, holed up the other side of Philo, is a private nest of weird and unemployable lefty zealots who have successfully barred the doors to contrary opinion for 40 years.
There are plans to upgrade and move into fancy offices in Ukiah near city hall, all the better to pester us with their inane PC rhetoric. Hopefully a lack of federal funding will cause our Anderson Valley zanies to terminate the plan and abandon their KZYX employment crutch altogether.
Headline Of The Month Award
A recent headline in the Ukiah Daily Journal, “Officials roll out new homeless strategy” is notable because it a) requires no reading of the subsequent story to perfectly understand its content, and b) manages to trumpet the good news of the state’s bold plan to finally end the homeless quagmire without ever mentioning the billions of dollars already misspent in not solving the problem.
In fact, after many years the situation is much worse than when California began to fix it. But we’re all sure this new, more better excellent strategy will really do the trick.
Get ready to celebrate.
Palindrome Time
I’ve long been an admirer of those who can put together palindromes, the clever phrases that read the same backwards and forwards. It’s easy to do a palindrome like “Madam I’m Adam” or one using numbers as in a calendar date earlier this month: “5-2-25.”
But palindromes can be much more difficult and far more clever, as in “A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.” Another: ”Naomi, sex at noon taxes, I moan.”
One of my favorites is the the guy’s answer when his doctor tells him he’s overweight and needs to go on a fast. The response:
“Doc note, I dissent. A fast never prevents a fatness. I diet on cod.”
Kramer you have just lost a listener. I will not read any more of your screeds.
Yay !
Back when I was a KZYX Board member and John Coate was the GM, we knew that the key to the station’s survival was diversity, and by “diversity” I don’t mean the usual DEI bullshit, I mean more conservative voices. We tried recruiting more conservative hosts for public affairs shows, but none showed up. In the subsequent years, KZYX did a good job reaching out to Latinos and Native Americans — which was the right thing to do given the demographics of our county — but yet, no conservatives. No Republicans. Trump remained an anathema. The U.S. military remained an anathema. Christians remained an anathema. The rule of law, and law enforcement, remained an anathema. Corporate America remained an anathema.
KZYX politics reflected the politics of the “lib labs” of the Central Democratic Committee and the usual cabal of county and city government workers. No outreach to blue collar workers. No outreach to folks who weren’t college-educated.
“Cancel culture” and “woke politics” staged a takeover public media — not just NPR but also PBS. If you weren’t “progressive”, you were silenced. You were marginalized. KZYX marched right along with it.
Another thing: The demographics of KZYX’s audience got older and older. More and more grey hair. More balding men with ponytails. More hammer toes. More colonoscopies. More arthritis. More sciatica.
You get the point: Most NPR affiliates — not just KZYX — simply got old and arthritic (to borrow the metaphor)
I don’t know what the answer is. Kids don’t listen to the radio anymore. Maybe KZYX should build out a platform for local podcasts to go along with the radio station.
I do one thing: KZYX’s current GM, Dina Polkinghorne is great. She fired the woke culture lunatic who was program manager, and she fired the lazy ass and cry baby who was the operations manager. She is moving the station to Philo, where no one lives, to Ukiah, our county seat. She’s building an endowment. She is building a great news department. Her production director and director of operations are brilliant.
Keep up the good work Dina. BTW, your current Board is great, too, especially for supporting you.