NPR: Nannying Public Radio

A few weeks ago your favorite Peasant was listening
to the radio one Sunday evening, listening to the some
of the Sunday fare offered on WHAD-FM Delafield, WI.
Please don't be shocked when I tell you, my fantastic
readers, that this station is a National Public radio affiliate.
Yes, I do realize that NPR is a very lefty media enterprise,
but I have ever only listened to their non-political shows,
especially their "Old Time Radio Drama" show which
was presented every Sunday evening at eight for 30 years.

This marvelously entertaining show featured the classic radio
shows from the "Golden Age" of radio; shows from the '30s,
'40s, and '50s such as Jack Benny. Fred Allen, Phil Harris and
Alice Faye, Groucho Marx ("You Bet Your Life"), Our Miss
Brooks (starring Eve Arden), and many fine dramas, westerns
("Gunsmoke"; "Have Gun Will Travel"; "The Six Shooter";
"The Lone Ranger" and may others), detective stories,
police dramas ("Dragnet"), adventure stories, and so much
more. Many people, including your faithful Peasant, enjoyed
these shows over the thirty years that the show has been on the
air. Until this month, that is.

Two Sundays ago, as I was listening to the beginning of OTRD,
its host announced that the show as airing for the final time that
evening, and that he was happy to have been its host over the
years. He didn't give any reason why, he simply carried on with
his hosting duties, then signed off with still no reason given as
to the show's demise. A few days later I was listening to one of
Milwaukee's local conservative talk shows, and the host noted
the cancellation of the show which I had looked forward to each
Sunday. According to the story, the show was given the ax for
having material which the station's bigwigs, and WPR (Wisconsin
Public Radio) determined to be racially insensitive, the classic
shows portraying black people, Latinos, and some others of certain
other groups as being somehow inferior.

Here's some truths about those classic radio shows which have escaped
WPR's executives: those shows presented scenes involving blacks
and whites in social situations based on the mores of those times.
While indeed those times were not as enlightened as out present time,
upon closer examination one would discover that many of the
non-white, non-Anglo-Saxon characters came off pretty well. Take
"The Jack Benny Show", Jack's (black) chauffer and general helper
Rochester (played by the fantastic Eddie Anderson) would invariably
get the better of Benny with his remarks about the former's aged
Maxwell automobile, a suit he'd plan to wear to a special occasion,
a party he'd want to host or to attend, always getting gales of laughter.

On "The Great Gildersleeve", Gildy had a black cook who always had
helpful advice for Gildersleeve and his nephew LeRoy, whenever
they found themselves in some sort of quandary. The Cisco Kid and his
partner in adventures in the Old West, Pancho, were two Mexican men
who were traveling crime fighters taking on robbers of stagecoaches,
banks, families and individuals; mining claim jumpers; con men;
other criminals of various sorts, always prevailing in every episode.
The Lone Ranger? The Masked Man (white) benefited greatly from his
friend and crime fighting partner Tonto, a Native American (referred to
in the stories as an Indian; again, that was consistent with those times).
As an aside, your exacting Peasant prefers the term "Native American"
to "Indian" for referring to our indigenous Americans, because the
latter can cause some to mistakenly think of someone from India.

The Green Hornet had Kato, expert in the martial arts. indispensable
to GH in fighting crime. On "Have Gun, Will Travel" Pallidan was
well-looked after by a Chinese couple when he was home at the San
Francisco hotel where he stayed when he was not out assisting a client
with his trusty gun. Yes, admittedly the couple both spoke without
using prepositional phrases, sounding rather comical, but perhaps
many of the Asian immigrants to the United States in that century
(19th century) spoke English that way, either coming over or in the
process of learning to speak English after their arrival.

And in no instances did any of these or other similar characters on
these beloved old radio shows get any belittling, degrading treatment;
no stereotypically slanted lines delivered, none of the things that would
present a degrading view of the characters' racial or ethnic grouping.
And through the years, people of many racial and ethnic groups, skin
colors, whatever categories people can be classified under have enjoyed
these shows, including when they were presented on the now-cancelled
Old Time Radio Drama show on WHAD-FM. I visited WPR's website
and read their statement explaining the reasons why they dropped the
show. They thought that the classic shows featured were not fit for
modern times, that they were stereotypical in their portrayal of
said people, and were therefore demeaning to them. They then averred
that they would be replacing OTRD with a series of interviews, some
live and some taped, some podcasts focusing on a wide range of topics;
knowing WPR, it will certainly be a solidly left-wing bill of fare. They
are going to use this opportunity to pull us ignorant, hapless peasants
out of the lowly depths from which we issue, where we actually laugh at
comedy radio shows and thrill to the adventurous bill of fare whose
only fault is having been created years ago, being simply snapshots in
time showing how far our society had progressed at that time in getting
away from the times and their accompanying ideas of blacks and
other non-white people being fit for little more that menial, drudgery-
filled manual work, just one step removed from slavery. And this is
going on at a time when others on the Left are pulling down statues of
our historical figures, eliminating books, films, and TV shows which
they find not to be sufficiently politically correct for whatever reasons
they concoct. It's all part of the effort to remake our country, our
society, and her people, to be a more fit and pleasing place to satisfy
their elite and elitist selves, never mind the fact that We the People
can think, reason, and discern for ourselves --- and we'd rather, instead
of having these arrogant jerks do that for us.

And the nannies of NPR and their affiliated organizations are part of
the process.


MEM