Linkery, 13 April 2007
Happy Friday the 13th.
- (Mr. Mountain Goat) John Darnielle’s blog’s RSS feed suddenly sprang into life, and I see that I have missed pretty much everything he’s posted since I subscribed. Anyway, I think unfortunately this means I might have to give CocoRosie another shot.
- Andrew Bird was on Letterman. (check out Dosh in a tie!)
- Oh, yeah, and I keep forgetting to mention that the new album is great. It has not usurped Weather Systems as my favorite. Yet.
- Bear, our friend’s cat, keeps trying to lure me into enhancing my MySpace presence with comments like these.
- The only intelligent coverage I’ve heard of the whole Imus thing yet was on NPR this morning with Steve Inskeep and Juan Williams talking about the invisible line that Imus crossed and some of the hypocrisy therein. They even ask the question I’ve wondered, which is what’s so bad about what he said compared to all of the other offensive and supposedly funny things he’s said over the years, and why do the advertisers care now?
- And when is NPR going to stop pretending that they’re not commercial radio? That link starts off with a 5-second *commercial*. They’ve definitely crossed an invisible line from “underwriting” to “advertising”. Maybe they should just officially change their name to the abbreviation “NPR” and never mention that it’s supposed to stand for “Public Radio”. Or, my vote would be to just change it to “The Nipper”. Personally, I decided to stop giving them a dime the day I heard what Christopher Lydon’s salary was, until the day I make more than he does. Until then, I need my money more than they do.
That is all.
April 13th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
you’re on myspace?!
April 13th, 2007 at 1:39 pm
It’s still public radio, no matter whose money it takes in exchange for what, as long as its purpose is to serve the public rather than to make money for its stockholders. And why shouldn’t a public institution pay its officers competitive wages? It should get only people who aren’t good enough to play in the big leagues?
April 13th, 2007 at 2:34 pm
Margaret, yes, but I feel dirty linking to it. Oh, whatever here it is. Your sister found me already, by the way.
John, you’re right. It’s somewhat hypocritical of me, too. I mean, I could also say that I’m not going to any more Red Sox games until I make as much as Manny Ramirez. And if I’m honest with myself, it would be harder for me to give up NPR than it would be for me to give up baseball. What I should really do, though is give money to WDUQ in Pittsburgh since I probably owe them far more than I do either of the Boston NPR stations which are both rolling in dough anyway.
That said, I really do think they should give up the “underwriting” euphemism and just admit that they accept advertising. They’re demure ads, without all the reverb and shouting, but they’re ads. I think of them as the audio equivalent of Google text ads. But not contextual.