So N came home today and freaked me out with weird pro-Putin speeches the likes of which I had never heard from him.
“WTF STFU LOL KGB FSB USSR but WTF???” I inquired.
“You suggested that I switch from the preacher radio station to something else to expand my listening choices,” he explained.
Later in the evening I took N’s car to go to the store and discovered that his new station was the NPR. First, the commentators discussed – with the kind of mind-numbing earnestness that is the tragic flaw of Liberals everywhere – whether the poverty in Central America was caused by Reaganites or US drug addicts. No other options were offered, of course.
I thought nothing could possibly be more stupid than this discussion and decided to wait for the next segment. It featured a conversation on how you can “enhance the emotional well-being of your cat” so that it “experiences the world as fully as possible” and “doesn’t nag you”. If your cat has an eating disorder, the commentators shared, you need to hide its food in rolls of toilet paper and behind books on bookshelves so that it can hunt “just like it would do in the wilderness.”
“Sick fucks,” I said, switching the station over to the preachers where I heard the sensible advice to keep my dirty tea towels in 3 different boxes to make doing laundry easier. At least, this was not followed with fake concern about Central Americans. which was an improvement already.
Clarissa's Blog 
It is inconceivable to many, maybe most Americans that not everything in the world is caused by the US. Take for instance the US obsessions with slavery in the US. A total of 1.4% of the slaves shipped out of Africa went to the US, about the same as went to tiny Barbados. In contrast Europeans shipped ten times as many slaves to Brazil. But, to listen to the American intelligentsiia you would think that 100% of all African slaves were shipped to the US South.
http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-comparative-look-at-numbers-in-slave.html
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Yeah, I was surprised that so few (relatively speaking) slaves had been taken to the US. Especially since one of the reasons was that practice in most other places was to just work them to death and import new ones.
Also there’s a lot of condescension about African involvement and cooperation in the slave trade (which could not have existed without said willing African involvement) as if the Africans capturing other Africans and selling them into slavery were not moral agents but themselves helpless victims of European and American greed…. somehow.
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It goes beyond that. US scholars have been deliberately through funding and other pressurestrying to prevent an African centered as opposed to a US centered historical narrative of slavery from emerging. For all the US academic Left’s shrill claims that all the evils of slavery were from Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Davis, and Robert E. Lee, they were really minor figures in the system compared to the Asanthene (King of the Asante Empire).
http://jpohl.blogspot.com/2013/11/how-should-slavery-be-remembered-in.html
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It’s not actually surprising that most slaves from Africa were not shipped to the United States (I learned this in grade school — up north), nor is it surprising that U.S academics have a U.S-centric focus to the international slave trade. I would suspect most slavery research focuses on the internal slave trade.
The United States is not “over” the Civil War. Anyone that tells you or insinuates otherwise is in denial. It makes for very weird and convoluted actions. It’s actually a misdemeanor of the second degree to “disrespect” the Confederate flag where I live.
FYI, the links to the Alem Bakagn site in Otto’s post now return 404 errors, though I found some sites saying that offices now sit on top where the actual prison used to be.
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“I would suspect most slavery research focuses on the internal slave trade”
But how much of it focuses on African (willing) participation?
“The United States is not “over” the Civil War”
Despite growing up in the fringes of the South, where the confederate flag* was as common as dirt, I never consciously realized that until my brother’s fiancee (now ex) came to visit for the first time and was totally freaked out by all the constant references to the civil war. I had always assumed it played as big a role in the regional memory of the north as it did in the south.
*which never actually represented the Confederate States of America
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“The United States is not “over” the Civil War. Anyone that tells you or insinuates otherwise is in denial. It makes for very weird and convoluted actions.”
– SO TRUE!!!
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Listening to NPR is torture. Couple of years ago when I was on OKCupid, I literally didn’t find one woman who didn’t profess their undying devotion to NPR (quite a few women mentioned not listening to NPR as a deal breaker).
I read not too long ago that NPR is quite proud of their ‘halo effect’ with advertisers – meaning a product is considered sanctified by their liberal audience if its ad appears on NPR. NPR obviously uses their ‘halo effect’ to whore themselves out to hideous corporations such as the union-busting Teach for America, whose mission is to replace regular teachers with college kids with no credentials or training, teaching part-time to pad their resume for their MBA applications.
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Stringer, imagine the first dates I have been on where I revealed I liked neither NPR nor Cajun music nor eating half portions. All 3 things scandalize men but not liking NPR is what freaks them out the most.
Y’all know NPR means Nice, Polite Republicans, right? 😉
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“Y’all know NPR means Nice, Polite Republicans, right?”
Ha, brilliant! I’m going to have to steal this from you.
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What is your dating pool, Z?
NPR is the elevator music of people who have pretensions of intellectualism and moderateness. I only listen to radio when I’m in transit somewhere, & I generally don’t like any talk radio. (I tried the college station several years ago. Democracy Now and transit just doesn’t work, especially in rush hour traffic.) I actually can’t stand listening to any one station for hours on end,even in otherwise boring places. I channel flip constantly. Being in a workplace where they left the television on for hours at a time actually just made me tired. I wonder how much of the Nielsen ratings are just bored people using media as aural filler.
It might be an age difference too. I’ll stream music for set periods of time, or listen to music while I’m working out (but that involves changing the gym tv and fluffy reading — both of which I ignore). I wonder how many cell phone texters listen to one station in transit.
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I live in rural south Louisiana, Shakti. Doing things Cajun, eating so called little plates, and demonstrating NPR fealty seemed to be very much expected of new faculty when I arrived. Bland, yes, I know. Once you are familiar with town and they with you, then other random new faculty don’t ask you out so much, so you don’t end up on dates you accepted in the first weeks due to not knowing anyone or knowing the area.
I like radio but am from cities where they have good stations. And now you can stream from anywhere. I realize you can put on Pandora and such things but those entities are often actually more canned / more muzak-like than radio. There is a lot to be said for shows made by individuals who know the music they are playing and also the town they are in. WWOZ in New Orleans, for instance, has really rich offerings.
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I thought the way to “expand” your cat’s horizons involves going to the veterinarian in order to get a prescription for “Cat Prozac”, more accurately known as “Kitty Special K”.
The following music video by Orbital shows how this can become a bit “Wonky” …
Yes, I know, I show you the nicest things. 🙂
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Clarissa – Thanks for making me laugh! You’ve made my day.
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