I've finally had it with National Public Radio. I've been contemplating starting such a series of intermittant diaries ever since their hackneyed coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign. Several incidents nearly pushed me over the edge. Just a week or so ago Mara Liasson and her polling pundits bet on Obama's failure, then had a nice laugh about it. That was almost enough...
What pushed me to action? What has caused me to write here and encourage you all to stop supporting NPR? Below the fold...
A 'journalistic' piece today on "All Things Considered" has none other than historical revisionist author Amity Shlaes placing the cause of the Great Depression firmly on FDR's back.
For G-20 Leaders, 1933 Summit Holds Lessons
There was no counterpoint, not even an editorial speed-bump to indicate that we should question Ms Shlaes assumptions. The reporter, and NPR, simply swallow her statements like some foregone conclusion.
Here's the historically vapid and misleading part:
Shlaes, now a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, says Hull was still on a ship en route to the London conference when, to his great dismay, he learned he would have nothing new to offer on trade. [because FDR wouldn't repeal protectionist trade policies]
"Hull said, 'Here I am traveling to London in the hopes of negotiating free trade, and my hands are empty.' By the end of his journey over, he was already disappointed and yet he knew, and he was prophetic, that trade was an important part of peace," Shlaes says.
The London conference lasted about six weeks, but it accomplished little. Hull went home in despair. Hitler proceeded in Germany with the program he called "national socialism." Other European governments concluded that the United States was ignoring the developing threats on the Continent. The Depression deepened and, within a few years, the world was at war.
Get that? She blames FDR for propelling Hitler onto the world stage.
Just a little context of who endorses Amity Shlaes:
Americans just now need what Amity Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish...."
-George F. Will,
Columnist
Join me in writing your local NPR station in disgust.