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News :: Miscellaneous |
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racist nuclear depravity |
Current rating: 0 |
by Dwight
(No verified email address) |
14 Mar 2002
Modified: 16 Mar 2002 |
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A woman advocated nuclear annihilation of the Middle East to make her feel safer, because the people there are backwards. NPR hosts reacted as if this was normal and acceptable. After my comments is a transcript of the call to NPR. |
I was appalled to hear a caller to National Public Radio explicitly and repeatedly advocate nuclear annihilation of the Middle East as a simple solution to insoluble problems among a backward people, because she doesn't want to worry about her children and husband on an airplane. Meanwhile she says she gets emotional while thinking about the (American) lives lost on 9/11. Nuclear annihilation of millions in "backward" countries apparently does not bother her, as it "would be the simplest way of dealing with the problem, and then we would have fewer people to focus on." She concludes that "if we have the power to end it we should end it."
What was even more appalling to me was that the host and guest, both from National Public Radio, did not comment on this racist moral depravity. They appeared to think it was perfectly normal for an American mother to want to kill millions so that her children would be a little safer. (Not to accept this ridiculous premise that nuclear war would make her children safer.)
The woman says 9/11 took away her peacefulness and instilled in her hate and intolerance. NPR's Daniel Schorr seemed to think this response was perfectly normal and acceptable.
The section is transcribed below, and can also be heard with Real Player at the link below. Listening to this, the woman sounds like a nice reasonable lady just worried about her children, but the content of her words is shockingly depraved (and ignorant). I think her comments are as bad as some white supremacist calling up and saying "kill all the *%#@!&". Worse, because that person would be cut off immediately and criticized by NPR, but this woman was allowed to spout her ignorant, violent, racist thoughts without comment.
If this is how many Americans think, God help us.
Not that those with fingers on the buttons think like this --- I think that the new nuclear plan is to use (or threaten to use) nuclear weapons offensively, not to "defend" the American people. But if a significant portion of the American public feels that nuclear annihilation is an option, and if opinion leaders on NPR are so oblivious or uncaring about the below racist depravity, isn't it more likely that the regime will use nuclear weapons?
Here's the clip:
National Public Radio, Talk of the Nation, September 11, 2002
Six Months After the Sept. 11 Terrorist Attacks
Host: Neil Conan
Guest: Dan Schorr, NPR's Senior News Analyst
Listen with Real Media at:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/totn/20020311.totn.02.ram
Section begins at 32:10, runs through 36:05.
--------------------------------------------
Neil Conan: We're talking this hour about what has changed in your life in the six months since the terrorist attacks, and looking for your impressions of this country six months on. With us is NPR senior analyst Daniel Schoor.
Our next caller is Vickie, in Charlotte, N.C.
Vickie: My feeling, or the way my life has changed, is I went from a very pacifist person to somebody who would consider nuclear annihilation of an entire continent in order to keep us safe.
Neil Conan: Hmm.
Vickie: And I never would have thought six months and a day ago that I would have even dreamed these thoughts.
Neil Conan: And was that transformation instant?
Vickie: No. Uh, I think it was because of a level of frustration because the problems are so huge to fix I can't imagine how we could fix them. A lot of the comments that have been made by prior callers and by your guests is that there are so many facets of the problem that trying to come up with some . . . I mean I look, you look at Israel and the Palestinians, it has been 50 years, it's been thousands of years in that region of the country and they haven't been able to get it together. Why should we think, you know, is this a process of our arrogance that we think we can possibly fix all of these things. And if we can't fix it, then . . . and the news footage of the way that people live in these other countries, that is so, appears to me to be so backwards, whether it is the result of war put upon them by other countries, or what their own people have done to each other . . . it just seems to be such an insurmountable problem, I don't want to have to worry about my sons getting on an airplane, I don't want to have to worry about them walking to work, I don't want to have to worry about any of this. And it just appears that that would be the simplest way of dealing with the problem, and then we would have fewer people to focus on.
Daniel Schorr: You think a nuclear bomb would help?
Vickie: I think it would minimize the risk to the people in this country because there would be fewer enemies out there. They would have to scatter to more, to other countries, they wouldn't be as, perhaps as unified in one location, or in one part of the world as it seems they are, at least that's based on what we hear in the media about where these people and where most of the people locate who hate us. I think out of all the things that September 11 took away from me, it was that peacefulness, that . . .
Daniel Schorr: Right.
Vickie: [that idea that] people can work it out, you know, you can find solutions to these things. [September 11] has instilled hate, and an intolerance, that I never before had. And that's to me more, has robbed me more than the building we lost, or even those lives which, it's hard to even think about without getting emotional about.
Daniel Schorr: How old are you boys, Vickie?
Vickie: Nine and thirteen. And my husband travels, he's on a plane today. He was traveling a week after, the Sunday after the bombings, or excuse me the airplanes hitting, and he was in Baltimore at the Lockheed Martin establishment doing a seminar that day. It was . . . he's constantly in danger, and it upsets me that I have to worry about this on a daily basis. It just upsets me because there's no, I don't see a simple solution, I don't see a short-term solution, and I don't want to get involved in a thousand, thousands of years worth of dilly-dallying back and forth. And if we have the power to end it let's end it.
Neil Conan: Thanks for the call, Vickie.
Vickie: Thank you.
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See also:
http://www.npr.org/ramfiles/totn/20020311.totn.02.ram
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i don't see... |
by say what?
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
15 Mar 2002
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any agreement from npr. what's this message really about? |
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Balance in Reporting Is the Issue |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
16 Mar 2002
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I haven't tried listening all the way through the recording. However, it would seem to me that to allow such an extreme and disturbing viewpoint to go out without further comment speaks volumes about the editorial prcatices of NPR during wartime. If there was some other further commentary to provide perspective and to suggest that other viewpoints held by Americans were not as jingoistic, inhuman, and as morally degenerate as the alleged "enemy other", then I could aee the criticsm of "say what's" as valid about this article.
We see none of that. I have to agree with the original author in this case, that the unremarked broadcast of the dialogue above IS an appalling display of ethnocentricity and racism. NPR can and should do better than this. |
