Holiday Season Open Letter To Minnesota / National Public Radio
By Mitch Berg
To: National Public Radio (cc: Minnesota Public Radio)
From: Mitch Berg; not really a pollyanna
Re: The Season For The Wheezin’
Dear various PRs,
Last Thursday was Thanksgiving. And like every week after every Thanksgiving, I know what that means, especially vis-a-vis Public Radio programming.
To listen to your broadcasts, we are on the precipice of a national mental health plague, something Americans only survive with the aid of therapy, drinking or an endless slathering on of (wry, fashionable-understated) cynicism. A time of year where all ceremony is onerous, all family members are insane or intolerable, all travel is wearing, all human interaction is a layer of plastic fakery over a rotten, frothing core of anxiety and desperation.
That’s right – the Holiday season.
Public radio programming will be clogged with with newscasters droning on about seasonal mental health afflictions; with “entertainers” jabbering about the only kind of get-togethers any of them seem to have – ugly, dysfunctional ones; with obscure writers and artists elevated (?) to radio commentators, testifying to the ordeal we’re all about to go through.
Point taken, Public Radio – the upper-middle-class, over-miseducated, secular (wildly-disproportionally secular-jewish) crowd is exquisitely bored with the whole thing.
But might I suggest you poke your collective (heh) nose outside your Subaru-driving, Oberlin/Bard/Saint Olaf-educated, Whole-Foods-shopping, free-range-alpaca-wearing, urban-liberal-privilege-wallowing, Israel-divesting, coffee-shop-music-loving, prematurely gray, bumper-sticker-clad Obama-shilling bubble and take note that for a whole lot of people, perhaps the majority, the holidays aren’t about mindless personal drama, and bring us some measure of joy?
I mean, fine – you’ll joke about how pathetic you find it. That’s fine – and nothing new!
Just saying – perhaps you can put down the bottle and take your head out of the oven and look around a bit?
That is all.
November 28th, 2016 at 1:53 pm
Can’t wait to hear how NPR is going to spin Ohio State knife attack into stricter gun control. Just you wait!
November 28th, 2016 at 3:48 pm
Yes it’s highly anecdotal, but a quick glance at FB seemed to show that since we now know the following:
1) It was not a gun attack, but a knife attack.
2) The attacker was a Somali “refugee” named Ali Mohammed. So, pretty much assured to be a Muslim. Here, let me show you my shocked face – 😯
…they’re moving back to the more important Trump bashing/delegitimatizing recount stories
November 28th, 2016 at 4:29 pm
Actually, Newsmax is reporting that the DemonRATs have already put out several tweets blaming guns, starting with the deranged and ignorant Shiela Jackson Lee.
November 28th, 2016 at 9:55 pm
NPR – Zero them out Mr Trump. They can’t hate you any more than they already do.
I resent each nano-cent of my taxes that goes to those smarmy bastages.
November 28th, 2016 at 11:48 pm
We managed our Thanksgiving gathering with mentioning Trump, Clinton or the 2016 election. The conversation did drift pokitical occasionally but its like everyone had a unwspoken rule that we knew there were huge divisions between people (myself and my gf included) and simply refused to let it go there. It wasnt a short gathering either. 4 1/2 hours. We had a great time
November 28th, 2016 at 11:49 pm
sorry about the typos, texting is unforgiving
November 29th, 2016 at 9:15 am
POD: Oh, you were texting. I always just assume you’re drunk.