Why Do We Continue To Fund NPR Propaganda?

May 5, 2004

For the first time in many months, I happened across NPR on my radio. It was the afternoon program All Things Considered. As soon as the host, Robert Siegel, said, “In 2000, when George W. Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination in Philadelphia . . .” my seasoned and conditioned antennae went up. I've been around this game long enough. I could smell a hatchet job coming and I turned the volume up.

 

Siegel then went on to introduce an article in the May issue of GQ magazine entitled, “The Child Bush Left Behind” and its author, Robert Draper. In his speech, George W. Bush recounted a visit he made as governor to a Marlin, Texas juvenile jail. He remembered near the end of his visit a young inmate asked him a question. “What do you think of me?” Bush took that to mean, “Is there hope for me?” Bush went on to talk about the wall that divides our society. A wall built by gangs and drugs that separate some children from the mainstream of society. He warned that we must tear down that wall but that big government was not the answer. The answer, he stated, was to put conservative values and ideas in place. In other words, help these people help themselves instead of propping them up.

 

Robert Draper saw another opportunity in that speech. He saw an opportunity, not to help this 15-year-old, but to exploit him. He went back to Marlin to find out what happened to this boy. His entire focus was that this was a child Bush left behind. Bush left behind. Not his father. Not his mother. Not his aunts or uncles or grandparents or the gang members who seduced him into joining their ranks. Bush left this child behind.

 

Ironically, Draper came up with a pseudonym for the 15-year-old that was far worse than anything George W. Bush or those mean, old Republicans ever did or didn't do. Draper's alias for him was Johnny Demon . Johnny Demon .

 

So, what was Bush expected to do about this kid? Draper never addresses that. He merely points to “the breathtaking chasm that exists between the life that is seen and lived by politicians and the life that's actually lived by certain segments of America.” As I've pointed out many times, it's the classic difference between liberalism and conservatism. The old Chinese proverb says, “Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime.” The liberals are still handing out fish while conservatives want to hand out fishing poles.

 

Johnny's problem didn't begin when he ended up at the juvenile jail. His problem began when those responsible for him assumed that someone else – ie: the government – would take care of him for them.

 

But there's another problem I see in all this. It's the blatant anti-conservative agenda of NPR, National Propaganda Radio. After I switched off the radio in disgust, I wondered why my tax dollars had to support such garbage. Remember the Valentine Doctrine? Government is there to do what the private sector won't, can't or shouldn't do. Commercial radio is thriving in America. Why should the government support programming that's in direct competition with private enterprise? NPR is funded by local, state and federal tax dollars in addition to private and corporate donations. It's time they learn to live like the rest of us. They've been around since 1967. They've had ample time to figure out the capitalist system. It's time we hand them a pole and make them fish for themselves.