Socialists and the Democrat Party are favoring Radio. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, this is not simply reports. Uri Berliner, a former NPR Business Editor, had to acknowledge that in 2011, liberals had a significantly larger market share than the outlet’s April 9 op-ed, which revealed the outlet’s disproportionately biased left-wing discrimination.
According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center for Citizens and the Press, 61 percent of NPR audiences identify as progressive, while a bit in the not-so-conservative release The Nation referred to NPR as promoting a “lifestyle condescension” of” comfortable letters from the East Coast citadels of social consensus.
No, Berliner’s exposé, which in turn led to his withdrawal following disciplinary actions from his employer, is more exciting than that. She responded to NPR CEO Katherine Maher, who demonstrates what is wrong with the technical class that controls our elite institutions. Maher exposes the intellectual narrowness and intellectual perish of our elite group in her uncharismatic reaction to Berliner’s statement criticizing NPR, which has renewed calls for defunding a media outlet that is partly funded by taxpayer dollars.
Epitome of the Self- Serving Woke Technocrat
Maher stated in an open letter to NPR employees on April 12 that” we succeed because of our diversity” and that “public press is important for an educated public.” She celebrated having “earned fresh confidence from younger, more diverse people”. In other words, she spelled out the language of the typical schoolmarmish and healing HR commissar who relies on the cliched jargon of the procedural woke workplace to conceal what is actually a clearly hateful, un-diverse specialized environment that coerces employees into intellectual conformity. Those who oppose that leftist project face dismissal or discipline.
Maher’s talk of diversity and professional decorum is subverted by her own divisive, radical political opinions. In May 2020 on her X ( formerly Twitter ) page, she acknowledged that while “looting is counterproductive”, it was “hard to be mad about protests not prioritizing the private property of a system of oppression founded on treating people’s ancestors as private property”.
In June 2020, she declared:” White silence is complicity”, and,” If you are White, today is the day to start a conversation in your community”. She referred to herself as having” cis white mobility privilege.” Unsurprisingly, she supports racial reparations.
In essence, Maher is a caricature of the successful white female professional who constantly uses woke racialist rhetoric to cynically detract from the fact that she herself is a descendant of the very same “oppressive power structures” that she so vehemently condemns. Given that she is, after all, the daughter of a Goldman Sachs executive and state senator, graduated from New York University, and worked for HSBC, self-serving play-acting of “rules for thee but not for me” is perhaps required.
” She’s a’ Portlandia’ character”, observed Bill Maher. ” I mean it’s ]a ] kind of White woman who says she’s Beyoncé’s spirit animal”.
The Problem Is Leftists Do n’t See a Problem
However, Katherine Maher and many others in her cohort do n’t even realize the issue with the ideological conformity their institutions have coercively perpetuated. This is the bigger issue. The self-reflective and contrition they’ve learned is a performative self-critical rhetoric that is manifested in admissions like Maher’s” cis white mobility privilege,” whether it be explicitly or implicitly.
It is encapsulated in the suburban and gentrified urban displays of BLM and” In This House We Believe” flags that serve as mechanisms of both self- congratulation and self- preservation:” Do n’t blame us upper- middle white people, blame those other bigoted, backward white people”. It reaches its height in people like Robin DiAngelo, the snake oil saleswoman who makes millions by helping the gullible (or, in many cases, the shrewd ) shed their” white fragility” by making the superficial statements of self-loathing while maintaining their jobs and bank accounts.
It’s nearly impossible for woke technocrats to accept that the institutions most focused on ensuring freedom of speech are as narrow-minded and intolerant as the ideologies they were created to combat.
Consider Perry Bacon, a columnist for the Washington Post, who claimed in an April 8 op-ed that” Democratic officials and the broader left generally support America’s long-standing system of universities that operate largely independent of partisan politics.” He continued:” The overwhelming majority of American students attend public colleges that do n’t have intense left- or right- wing activism”. Who could confidently assert with a straight face that academia operates independently of partisan politics in the face of antisemitic, pro-terrorism demonstrations on American campuses?
Defunding NPR Might Send a Message
Calls have resurfaced to defund NPR in response to Berliner’s devastating essay criticizing it for its blatant leftist bias, as they have since the 1990s. Since doing so would have little impact on the federal budget, only about$ 126 million in taxpayer funds are distributed to public radio stations, which is essentially a rounding error. And given that’s only a fraction of public radio’s budget, it’s likely the organization would carry on, perhaps, as an act of protest, shored up or even expanded via the largesse of eager, wealthy lefty donors.
Defunding NPR would undoubtedly send a message that there are still some ways for representative government to counteract the smug authoritarianism of our elected ruling class. The fact that NPR’s failures are covered in the news so quickly will likely give this fervent Republican cause some thought, as some writers have suggested. But given Congress’s continued anemic efforts on everything from abortion to our border crisis, I would n’t put too much faith in that effort.
It will be largely up to individual Americans, in their families, communities, and support networks, to take effective action to create and support the kind of America NPR CEO Katherine Maher so vehemently detests, as many conservatives have already discovered.
Casey Chalk serves as the New Oxford Review’s editor and columnist as well as The Federalist’s senior contributor. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands is his book.
