Home to Roost at NPR

Despite an occasional ear to Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, and Fresh Air, I stopped listening to National Public Radio several years ago. I quit because I was ... offended, something not easy to accomplish with me.

I was just south of Washington D.C. in one of Harold Ives' Mack trucks listening to All Things Considered. That day ATC had Janet Huckabee on as a guest when the Huckabees were still the first family of Arkansas. The topic under discussion was the triple-wide trailer placed on the lawn of the Governor's Mansion while renovations where underway inside the house.

I can handle heavy doses of sarcasm and irony, but the preening condescension of the interviewer was too much. Within seconds of the start of the interview, Mrs. Huckabee knew that she had been trapped in a conversation intended to humiliate and embarrass her with the meanest of intentions, as well as to poke fun of Arkansans in general and to depict us as redneck trailerpark trash. The snobbery dripped off the radio. Although no fan of the Huckabees, I thought this was one of cruelest 'gotchas' I had ever witnessed.

For most of my life I wondered why my parents, both natives of rural Arkansas, would let me see James Bond movies but forbid me from watching The Beverly Hillbillies (we lived in Ohio at the time of the show's debut). Their unusual restriction came into clear focus.

Racism is only one face of prejudice in this country.

My sensitivity to this came in large part because through some cataclysmic changes in my life and my circumstances I got to see both sides of a socioeconomic fence that is surprisingly high. I left an insulated white-collar world where I got respect and consideration I perhaps did not deserve and entered a blue-collar world whose minions are treated, for the most parts, as idiots. Those who honored me as a guest in their homes and at their tables and in their pulpits were the same who would now scarcely even notice my existence unless the lettuce at the salad bar was not as fresh as it was last week or the chicken looked a little brownish at Fresh Market.

Juan Williams forsook the narrative for a few moments of candor and got fired from NPR. The great Bob Edwards was dismissed for reasons that perhaps are similar. Ron Schiller got his walking papers when he became the victim of another piece of gotcha journalism for espousing the kind of prejudice NPR is supposed to stand against - he kind of 'outprejudiced the prejudiced.' Vivian Schiller read the tea leaves and skedaddled.

I don't know what energizes the Tea Party although I hear all the talk about personal liberty, smaller government, blah, blah, blah ... . I suspect a great part of their impetus is far more visceral and much less political than it seems - there are a whole bunch of people in our society that are tired of being treated like fools because of their jobs, their neighborhoods and housing, and where (or whether) they went to school.

In spite of my personal problems with it, I am vehemently opposed to defunding National Public Radio. But condescension is a real pisser, and, in this case, the chickens are coming home to roost.