Speaking Past

“The Moth Radio Hour” – a public radio production featuring the modern version of “storytelling” – is an often-insufferable bit of radio, featuring stories by people who are just not especially compelling. And yes, I”m stereotyping very broadly here, but prove me wrong.

No – I’ll prove myself wrong. This story – by one Victor Levenstein, who was 94 when he was recorded for the program – told the story of his arrest and interrogation by the KGB in 1944, before a New York audience…

…which, one must imagine, is largely composed of people who unironically think The Right is the “side” in modern politics who’d bring that sort of thing back.

8 thoughts on “Speaking Past

  1. Isn’t one of Berg’s laws about projection Mitch?

    Absolutely everything the left says the right is doing or thinking, or what the right is, is projection, and is actually describing leftists and leftism/progressivism.

  2. It is always worthwhile to revisit Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless.”
    https://hac.bard.edu/amor-mundi/the-power-of-the-powerless-vaclav-havel-2011-12-23
    Havel’s point was that one of the techniques used by communist regimes — though I suppose it is true of any aurthoritarian regime — to oppress their populace was to force them to accept and repeat lies that they knew were not true. Orwell, of course, touched on this as well.
    And while the US is not a totalitarian state, the same technique is being used internally on the political and cultural left.
    There is no such thing as biological sex. Riots and other violent acts by blacks are caused by white people. A child is not a human being.

  3. MO, I have no idea whether they borrowed from each other or what, but there’s a similar line from Theodore Dalrymple about political correctness:
    Political correctness is communist propaganda writ small. In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, nor to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to.

    Man, there’s a lot of smart people out there.

  4. Not sure what this guy was talking about because everyone knows the Soviet Union was “mostly peaceful”.

    BTW, thanks for posting the link. I almost missed it.

    I heard about it on MPR on the rare occasions when I get to listen to NPR/MPR for 15 seconds before head-butting my radio to another station.

    I mean, the first 6,000 stories about race, gender and LGBT++ were interesting but that was decades ago.

    Gesh, maybe they are getting the message that an audience made up exclusively of virtue signaling Karens is a pretty small crowd.

  5. Kinlaw: http://www.shotinthedark.info/wp/?page_id=70364

    Gesh, maybe they are getting the message that an audience made up exclusively of virtue signaling Karens is a pretty small crowd.

    Greg: Maybe, but remember: They don’t have to try as hard to boost or even maintain ratings to survive. They get public funding, most of their listener donors are already firmly in their camp, and they have very few revenue generating ads for companies which they need their listeners to patronize (The Spectacle Shoppe in Edina does advertise occasionally on Classical MPR).

    Unlike all other radio out there.

  6. Classical MPR is 95% of my radio listening while driving (but it’s maybe 25% overall, I usually have a podcast playing). However, I am loathe to listen during their quarterly pledge drive. I’d rather listen to commercial radio with their 5 time/hour commercial breaks and 42 or fewer minutes per hour of content*, than MPR’s incessant begging justifications why they need my money, for 10 days straight.

    *Wild guess since I’ve never timed it. Mitch, how much of any hour do you spend actually talking vs ads running?

  7. Classical MPR is 95% of my radio listening while driving

    That was true of me for years also, but I moved 100 miles south and though there still is an MPR station in our area, it’s signal does not go far.

    You know…. I used to love listening to The Morning Show, Morning Edition and All Things Considered before KNOW and The Current, it was a big part of my life.

    Now I can rarely stomach them for three minutes at a stretch.

    Sadly NEWSHOUR on PBS went down the same route, and I fear that Masterpiece is headed there too.

  8. Pingback: In The Mailbox: 06.29.21 : The Other McCain

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