Money “Wasted” on Coffee?
Posted by Eric (March 29, 2006 at 2:21 pm)
I listen to a lot of public radio. The political bias drives me mad, of course, but nowhere else can you hear people consistently speaking in complete paragraphs and employing polysyllabic words. The freedom from ads is another plus, and with your liberal-bias-filter set to 11, you can actually learn quite a lot from public radio.
(As to why there is no conservative version of public radio, I would suggest that there is no viable market for any intellectually rigorous radio; such programming must be subsidized to exist at all, and whereas liberals tend to embrace government subsidy, conservatives tend to eschew it.)
Where we live in Aurora, IL, we can tune into two public radio stations, WNIJ in Dekalb and WBEZ in Chicago. WBEZ has been conducting a pledge drive the last week or so; when they cut to “Pledge Central,” I usually switch over to WNIJ. But the other day I listened through the pledge pitch because they were running a two-hour Car Talk special that wouldn’t have been aired on WNIJ.
As usually, the host tried to cast one of their big donation levels in terms of how much one spends each day on a cup of coffee. She said, “Just think of how much you waste on coffee each day.”
“Waste”? How much I “waste” on coffee? What I spend on coffee each day (which, by the way ain’t much—we drink “Beaumont” coffee, the Aldi brand) is probably the most well-spent funds in our entire budget. My morning coffee is the foundation upon which all the day’s efforts are built.
She might as well have asked me to think of all the money I waste on clean water each day, or on heating my home. Why think of the hundreds you waste each year on luxuries like electric lighting! Why not donate that to public radio?
Not that I would donate to them anyway; that would be material cooperation with evil. (For the record, the evil I refer to is the pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-Christian agenda, not the bad attitude towards coffee.)
Note: Pictured above is a particularly lovely cappuccino I made in spring 2003, shot with a Canon Powershot 300.
Eric-
I have known you for decades; we have been friends through numerous ups and downs in each others’ lives, and yet I will never agree with you about many of your issues.
I find material cooperation with evil to fall under the category of supporting our current administration and its neo-fascist policies. I find material cooperation with evil to exist when we willingly, knowingly, almost gleefully kill innocent women and children in ANY country.
As for your belief that there is no “conservative version” of public radio, there doesn’t need to be. The mainstream media (in particular radio) is overflowing with ultra conservative, ultra right wing shows…from Limbaugh, to Focus on the Family and Dobson, to Sean Hannity, to Bill O’Reilly, to Glenn Beck, to ANYTHING on Fox’s radio station, conservativism and radio is omnipresent.
But back to what prompted me to comment on this particular entry, for the life of me, I have never been able to understand any Christians concept promoting “anti-homosexuality”…the people on the far right, the people who denounce homosexual marriages as somehow defiling the sanctity of marriage are hypocrites and liars…from Rush Limbaugh who is thrice divorced travelling to the Dominican Republic (a shining bastion of the modern sex trade) alone with viagra, unmarried with viagra….I am angered and disgusted. What a lummox, what a lying sack of manure.
When I hear people like Tom De Lay (an upstanding Christian, so he believes of himself) ignoring the things that go on in the Marianas islands for the sake of money…supporting sex trade, forced abortions and the other reprehensible things that happen there, I can barely contain my rage.
Conservatives in general are hypocrites. Do you think a liberal WANTS people to have an abortion? Are you kidding me? What I want is health care for EVERYBODY, every child, every adult, everyone in between…what I want is a government that doesn’t lie to us in order to kill people with brown skin. You want abortion to stop, provide people with an education, teach them the difference between right and wrong, and understand that people have always and will always have sex. I would love to meet up with you sometime this summer and have a debate over lunch, you can see my kids (only two), I can see yours (what do you have now..twenty, twenty-two???), I’m in the mood for a healthy debate…just don’t wear your bike shorts.
Comment posted June 29th, 2006 at 4:41 pm
Wow – it’s quite a compliment that you think of us libs as intelligent, but I hate to break it to you… NPR has absolutely no political affiliation or bias whatsoever.
Don’t feel bad. It’s often that intelligent, empathetic, reflective viewpoints are mistakenly labeled “liberal.”
Comment posted September 30th, 2011 at 5:17 pm
Perry — Thanks for dropping by. Funny stuff. No liberal bias on NPR. Right. But why is it that only liberal think so?
Comment posted November 22nd, 2011 at 3:44 pm