so yes.

If you’re reading this, you may not be aware that we have, in fact, moved to radio-sweethearts.com.  Come join us there.

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The hits keep coming

Surely this is the pinnacle of journalism.  Elizabeth Blair, on tonight’s “Weekend All Things Considered” conducted a particularly hard-hitting interview, as part of the program’s “In Character” series.

Her truly probing interview turned up several unexpectedly deep answers….

Did you know, for example, that while Cookie Monster’s favorite word is “cookie,”  his least favorite is “outtacookies?”  (That’s not entirely responsible reporting on my part–”outtacookies” is actually tied with “pusillanimous,” though Monster claims not to know that word’s meaning.)

There’s a video on the “In Character” blog.   It’s amazing to see Blair made so completely pusillanimous by someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Filed under: National Public Radio, Other Programs , All Things Considered

A few things you should know about me: I have a huge soft spot for mix tapes (even if they’re CDs). I love spending hours agonizing over the perfect track list, picking out songs that hint at what I’m feeling about the recipient, but don’t come right out and say it, and listening and re-listening to them long after I’ve given them away. I like receiving them, too – from friends, from boys that I like, from total strangers.

I drive an aging green hatchback Ford Focus. It’s got a messy interior, a misfiring engine, and a turn signal that only works sometimes. My parents gave it to me on my 16th birthday, not realizing that maybe I should have already known how to drive before I tried to master the delicate art of the manual transmission. Now, the Fightin’ Focus is almost 8 years old, and she’s (miraculously) still going (sort of).

Knowing these things, you can imagine my delight when I found this story on npr.org.

It’s a lovely slice of serendipity, and I highly recommend that you either listen to it, or read it, especially if you like rock’n'roll, or beat up cars.

Filed under: Uncategorized , features, music

So Wrong, Yet So Right

From the people that brought you “Jerry Springer: The Opera” comes “Meltdown”, a ballet about the life and times of Britney Spears.

Listen here. 

I’m not sure how to feel about this one. On one hand, I find it absolutely brilliant. It’s a ballet. It’s a ballet about the rise and fall of Britney Spears.

On the other hand, the girl clearly has some severe mental issues that need to be dealt with. I’m alright with the Springer opera – Jerry Springer is clearly of a mind to make fun of himself – but I’m not sure that Brit is capable of it.

Class or crass? Give it a listen and tell us what you think.

Filed under: Uncategorized , Ballet

Thy Coverage of the Big Game Misseth the Mark

I’ve come to really appreciate the sports coverage on Morning Edition. Frank Deford covers all kinds of sports brilliantly. He can make me wonder why even the dullest sports (cricket, anyone?) don’t have a massive fan base.

So, you’d think that covering something like the Super Bowl would be really easy, right? It’s the most-watched sporting event of the year, complete with superstar players, big rivalries, and big deal media coverage.

With that in mind, when I heard this morning’s Shakespearean Super Bowl pre-game coverage, I was just kind of confused. NPR has an erudite reputation to keep up, but this five-minute story was inexcusable.

This story is full of bad puns, god-awful rhymes, and a smattering of sexism in the form of a “Lusty Sideline Wench”.

I would explain it, but I really can’t. You need to listen / read it for yourself. Just know that the line “Tis so, he is yet more Manning than man” is included.

Bless their hearts, they tried so hard.

Filed under: National Public Radio , Morning Edition, sports

BREAKING MOTHERFUCKING NEWS

Attention public radio personalities: We are not like Andrea Campbell. We have crushes, but we respect the distance.

Might I refer you to the “Legal” section of our site? We’re making most of our stuff up.

This, however, is total truth. Check the Chicago Tribune: Garrison Keillor has a real-life stalker.

So that’s why he had such good advice about my old stalker. He used to have an advice column on Salon.com, called Mr. Blue. I wrote in. In the last installment, I’m the one billed as “Cramped.”

The man does have the voice of God, and God does get a lot of stalkers. It’s just too bad Keillor doesn’t tell the president what to do.

Filed under: American Public Media, Other Programs, Real News , APM, In Real News, Keillor

Because I’d said that one story asked more questions

(expanded from the 1/25 recap)

Seems that The New York Times’ “The War at Home” series really upset some veterans and military bloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.

I do find that kind of distressing. What’s more newsworthy about 121 vets out of 700,000? That the crimes happened, or that the percentage is actually kind of low? (If I’m doing my math correctly, and given my English major, I probably am not, it’s something on the order of 0.017% of Iraq war vets who have committed or have been accused of murder. )

There’s another wrinkle to this logic. The guy who was really upset wasn’t taking into account lesser crimes committed by recently returned soldiers–theft, embezzlement, pulling their pieces out on the lanes like some latter-day Walter Sobchek.

But I think the real issue here is, in fact, the lingering spectre of both John Rambo and Walter Sobcheck–the mentally unstable returned vet who can never quite recover from the war, who can never quite realize that not everything can be related back to or blamed on Vietnam.

By pointing out problems that some soldiers have upon returning, the public becomes able to subconsciously participate in this metonymy–conflating the part with the whole. As much as I love the New York Times, NPR, and news coverage in general (except maybe anything involving Chris Matthews), I think this is a problem with any coverage of the war and its effects.

I think that what the Times’ piece–and I haven’t read it yet, so could have this completely wrong, because my understanding is completely drawn from On the Media–has been trying to do is to separate the individual from the whole, to prove the metonymy false by placing these 121 murders and accused murderers in the context of their individual lives.

The effect is something similar to what happens when people try to humanize Hitler. One group believes that to do so diminishes the horror of what he did; another group–to which I belong–finds it more terrifying that a normal person could suddenly turn tyrant. Here, one group feels that the coverage of these murders plays into the stereotype; another group feels that the coverage of the accused and convicted individuals humanizes their situations and asks more questions about the causes of their crimes than it ever tries to answer.

I don’t really want to take sides here; I haven’t completed reading “The War at Home,” and so I feel completely inadequate to speak to the piece. I can only speak about the controversy as spoken of on On the Media. I think it’s fair only to say that it raises more questions for me than it answers.

Filed under: Commentary, On the Media, Real News

So Rambo, Sarcozy, and Britney Spears walk into a bar. Bobby Fischer says “I hate America.”

Seriously. How much Rambo can one society take? A friend of mine is really–I mean really–pulling for the new movie to be just one explosion, lasting for two hours. I’ve seen the trailer, and I don’t know how to break it to Joey, but it’s not just one constantly combusting gasoline fire. However, Sylvester Stallone totally chops some dude’s head off–for Jesus. I’m not kidding. For Jesus. While someone in the background is reciting the Sinner’s Prayer.

Have you seen the trailer? It’s intense. And fairly offensive to my sensibilities.

So why start On the Media with Rambo? Because, obviously, Rambo is a Vietnam vet. And Vietnam vets are crazy, according to the stereotype. Did they start this way because stereotypes in movies are a part of the media worth talking about?

Actually, they began with Rambo because, according to Brooke, “some veterans fear that the Hollywood depiction of the depressed or deranged vet could reassert itself. It’s that fear that may underlie the rage generated in some precincts of the military blogosphere by a piece in The New York Times earlier this month.”

Right. Today’s episode will not be one hour-long explosion disguised as media commentary. Sorry Joey.

Seems that The New York Times series “The War at Home” really upset some veterans and milbloggers for what they claim is its de-contextualization of the stories of 121 Iraqi war veterans who have committed–or been accussed of committing–murder since returning home. Part of the problem seems to be that the piece doesn’t compare that number–121–with the number of well-adjusted vets–one guy said 700,000, but I can’t, off the top of my head, verify that.

This story raises more question than it asks.

The biggest question raised for me however, is why they transition out of this story with Elliot Smith’s “Southern Belle.” I mean, the narrator of the song commands the listener to “kill the southern belle.” Bad taste? Or is the song too good to allow that to matter?

Doesn’t matter. Talk about what comes next on the program. Bob wants to announce that French President Nicolas Sarcozy is in love with a model–while hiding his own love. Brooke says that he’s in love with the media and should get a room. I think she meant Sarcozy.

Next, we get to cover Bob’s coverage of the coverage of the death of Heath Ledger. How the news cycle creates a vacuum of information, and the voyeuristic attitudes of human nature abhor a vacuum.

This informational osmosis explains how minor details (prescription drugs, rolled up 20 dollar bill) led to wild speculation as to the causes of death, what happened in the days preceeding, and members of his inner circle revealing the details of his private life in British tabloids. Ledger hasn’t even been dead a week.

But the thing is, as Bob points out, the AP already has over 1000 obits prepared and ready to go, because in a world where the news cycle is increasingly measured in minutes more than hours, every second lost in the race to be the first to announce the news has a monetary cost.

Bob thinks that the AP is merely ‘glomming onto’ the thrill of watching young celebrities self-destruct, but, as AP Entertainment Editor Jesse Washington points out, the AP doesn’t ‘glom.’

Brooke, the erstwhile Jane Birkin to Bob’s Serge Gainsbourg, picks up the next story, about French President Nicolas Sarkozy and his very public, steamy love affair with the model Carla Bruni.

Brooke, along with the opinion editor of Lebanon’s Daily Star, speaks very highly of Sarkozy’s ability to manipulate the media to his advantage. It is as though the love affair is less with Bruni and more with the media.

Meanwhile, Bob is enamored with the fact that FBI’s most wanted is now a multi-media campaign, even if it makes it harder for him to Photoshop up a “Bob’s 10 Most Wanted” poster, consisting of the following criminals:

1. Brooke.
2. Brooke.
3. Brooke.
4. Brooke.
5. Michele Norris.
6. Brooke.
7. Brooke.
8. Bjork.
9. Brooke.
10. Brooke.

Next story — Here’s something more interesting: As a personal note, I keep my iTunes library, and backed up movies, on an external hard drive. I keep my computer backed up fairly regularly, because I type up my homework and class notes whereever possible. I’m no lifeblogger, but my hard drive? DEFINITELY an extension of my brain. (A much more organized extension of my brain, at that.)

The thing is, if it’s an encrypted hard drive, which you have to hand over a password to… courts are deciding that it’s akin to the combination to a combination lock–because it’s a combination stored in the brain, rather than a physical key you can hand over–and therefore, you don’t have to hand it over! This is fantastic! They need some serious just cause to make you do it, because not only do the contents constitute the “persons, houses, papers, and effects” that the Fourth Amendment protects, but having a password to access those contents grants you you Fifth Amendment protection, owing to the fact that you could be incriminating yourself.

We began the episode with Rambo, and we wrap it up with Bobby Fischer, the John Rambo of chess club geeks everywhere. He’s a complex character, and this is a pretty interesting story, but, uh, I can’t be bothered to recap this, because chess is the kind of game I can be taught and re-taught (usually eight-year olds who proceed to cream me), but never retain. It is personal bias, and personal bias alone, that keeps me from going more in depth.

“Radio Sweethearts” is brought to you each week by Matthew and Kerry, the “Radio Sweethearts” team. This week’s recap written by Matthew and edited, well, pretty much just by–lonely sigh–me. Until now. Because she’s holding the Stylebook.

Filed under: National Public Radio, On the Media, Recaps , Amendment, Britney Spears, Constitution, French President, Rambo

A Big Spoonful of Electorate Soup

I love it when Bob gets confessional, and this week, he opens the episode with the admission that though last week’s political story was lacking a sufficient angle, it was the Iowa Caucus – it had to be covered out of sheer excitement (because come on – caucuses are BAD ASS).

This week is different. The New Hampshire primary has the sort of angle that keeps our heroes awake at night. Because when journalists are wrong, “On the Media” is there to gleefully point it out.

New Hampshire, it seems, was the scene of a “pundit implosion…the creamy remnants of which…” Wait. Hold up. Bob just said “creamy remnants”.  Gross!

Here’s what happened: the pundits were wrong. Everyone from Lou Dobbs to the “unsinkable Chris Matthews”, the “towering monument to certainty” called Barack Obama as the winner of the Democratic primary. The problem? Like confused, hung over frat boys waking up naked next to another dude, on the morning after, the media realized that they had made some bad choices the night before. Clinton beat Obama at the primary with 39 percent of the vote to his 37 percent.

After playing several clips of apologizing journalists, Bob notes that being wrong is one of the dangers of being a political reporter. But that doesn’t mean that the journalists get a pass, because though they can apologize all they want when they’re wrong, the electorate doesn’t always get it. They don’t, in Bob’s words, “eat the soup.” I think Bob is drinking the Kool-Aid , because that made absolutely no sense.
Brooke points out, a vote for Clinton is a vote against Chris Matthews. Knowing that, I’m almost willing to put aside my fear of Hilary Clinton, because the terror inspired Chris Matthews is so much bigger than any petty dislike of voting records.

Brooke also takes a moment here to psychologically evaluate her guest, Christopher Hayes, after he notes that covering the New Hampshire primary is terrifying. She’s all “so, does this fear stem from insecurity? Did you get enough love in your childhood? Tell me about your mother.”

The point is – political journalism is dangerous. Reporters inject their own feelings, they report on projections instead of solid results, and things are often called too early in an effort to deliver the sort of up to the minute coverage that will bring in viewers and ratings. Also, when reporters are held to stringent filing deadlines, they don’t have time to process information.

Also, being on the campaign trail can create a closeness that doesn’t lend itself to unbiased reporting. Reporters can develop Stockholm syndrome with McCain, or become sociopaths with Clinton. I imagine that those covering Obama run around yelling “Progress!” constantly.

Despite the hope inherent in an election year, the rest of the show seems to focus on some pretty scary things. In rapid succession, the following stories are covered:

1. A story on a homicide reporter in Los Angeles who has written about every homicide in L.A. for the past year (and I thought a lot of people got shot in Memphis.)
2. A segment on ICANN, (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) that brings me to the stark realization that holy shit, all of the internet is on ONE COMPUTER somewhere in Virginia. Matthew is quick to point out that the entire internet isn’t on one computer – just all of the domain names – but I don’t care. The thought that only one computer is controlling all of the domain names is just as scary – what if it crashes? Is there back up? Is no one else concerned about this?
3. A segment on the media’s use of the word “recession.” Recessions are scary. And it’s also scary that looking back at my notes, the only thing really written about this section is “I’M SO CONFUSED!!!”

But I know that everything is going to be alright as soon as I hear Bob say “Edward R. Murrow.” I tend to believe that Murrow is a lot like Superman. He swoops in whenever he’s needed to save news broadcasts. And in this segment on The Daily Worker, he rides in on a catchy communist theme song.

Alas, this is the 50th anniversary of the death of The Daily Worker, the official communist daily paper. The paper had a sports writer – which strikes me as odd, because sports distract from the revolution! – as well as a comic called “Little Lefty.” Most importantly, though, they have a stupid catchy theme song that suggests that if you go to a dance to meet girls, you can catch their eye by hanging out and reading the Daily Worker.  I guess dancing is also a distraction from the revolution, but I can totally picture Brooke leaning against the wall in Bob’s office, skimming a copy, just to make Bob crazy with longing. Not that I want to think that Brooke is a tease. I just think she would take the opportunity to fuck with Bob.

And that’s why I like her.

This post was written by Kerry, and edited by Matthew, who has been staring at her lecherously the entire time.

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