Michael Smerconish is a dumbshit

Rush Limbaugh wannabe Michal Smerconish of Philadelphia wrote a column in the Philadelphia Daily News entitled Defund The People's Republic Of NPR.

*yawn*.

Gee, how original and cute. Yet another wingnut mouthbreather claiming NPR is 'liberal' (probably because they're not as obsessed with the Clintons as the hacks on the AM dial are), and therefore, 'Communist'. Gee, party like it's 1949, huh? Anyways, Smirky rambles on about an employee of Philadelphia's NPR affiliate who left a nasty message on the voice mail of a conservative web site. The webmaster did a little search of the domain she posted from, and found out where she worked. As a result of the flap, the woman resigned.

Smirky then goes off on an idiotic rant about what he calls "Radio Pravda", and bemoaning the fact that it's 'taxpayer supported'. First off, the woman, Rachel Buchman was not employed by NPR. She was employed by WHYY, an NPR affiliate. Second, NPR is not 'government supported'. According to Wikipedia and NPR, very little money actually comes from the government. NPR states this figure to be 0.2%. Most of their money comes from affiliate fees, pledge drives, underwriting announcements and donations from individuals, organizations and corporations. In other words, it's likely that NPR benefits from government tax breaks (as a non-profit organization) about as much as, say, people like Jerry Falwell, who uses his position with his 'church' to bash gays, liberals, Catholics, and others he doesn't like. We pay people like Tom DeLay, Rick Santorum and others more money to spew hateful rhetoric and circumvent the democratic process than we pay NPR to present a relatively even-handed account of the news from around the world and the ability to hear subversive fare like 'Car Talk' on the weekends. Wonder what Smirky has to say about that?

Furthermore, NPR isn't all that liberal. Many of their shows tend to take a centrist slant, though some shows veer off to each end of the political spectrum. All liberal, it isn't. But wait: Why do I feature NPR and it's affiliates so prominently in my site's links? Well, because it's a non-conservative network that aims toward a heavily left-leaning audience. In short, many liberals make NPR and public radio in general their preferred choice for news and information content on the radio, so I provide the links to it. NPR is communist like conservative radio is facist, meaning they aren't really, but it's a cheap and easy way to attack the other side. Smirky is a lazy idiot who's dumbing down for his audience. He's taking the easy way out, and I'm shocked that a major daily newspaper gives this moron an outlet for spewing utter stupidity. Wonder what his opinion of the Dan Rather/documents controversy is, especially since he himself is playing fast and loose with the facts, intentionally deceiving his readership. All five of them. And, according to his bio, he's a Phi Beta Kappa graduate in government and journalism. Some journalist, huh?

Gotta hand it to Smirky, though. In one newspaper column, he bashed liberals, NPR, Air America, people who don't like conservatives, and communists. And, rather than actually presenting the facts (which took me mere minutes to find), prefers to pull it all out of his ass for his lemming fans to easily digest. Rush would be so proud of his clone. I think he's a complete idiot, and if he really had even a dash of talent, he'd be syndicated like a zillion other fools riding Limbaugh's coattails and popping Oxy pills. I think he'd have a better radio career as a Morning Zoo stuntboy running naked in downtown traffic and making an ass out of himself. Well, he's got the second part right.