This little story has been on a slow burn for a while  now. I used to live in LA up until nearly three years ago. There are not  many nice things about traffic in the city of Lost Angels. I can only think of one. You know  what I am talking about, the good old companion of the road more  traveled: NPR. Untold are the days that Larry Mantle made more  interesting and thoughtful.
When I left LA my next stop was Phoenix, as of today state with  the honor of enforcing the most restrictive illegal immigrant laws in the land,  and where my (lefty) radio is like the East Goths to the West Goths -  further right.
So I was looking forward with some gusto to arriving  in Seattle after returning to work last year in January. I thought, well, this is an  independently streaked lefty state. Exactly what I need, because San Francisco was  like Alabama.
You can imagine my chagrin when I was confronted with  repeated versions of what can only be called War Porn. Something I  thought was confined to the long waves. Far be it from me to judge the  merits of such programs (I hate them), but what is more important, is  that NPR never used to broadcast sob stories of the good soldier before.  Until Barak Obama was elected.
So not only do I have to eat my words  in regards to the left bias of the media, I also have to assume that  NPR was equally manipulative in its actions before this. Did you ever hear a story of a soldier who died in the wars, and what an  excellent person he was, and how people will miss him, and how he always  helped the underdogs, and was a natural leader, and helped pick up  the books of a kid that was being picked on in school? Right, never. In fact, the  opposite was the truth, there seemed a much higher willingness to  dehumanize the soldiers of the USA. Considering that my traffic radio  time here is roughly 10 % of what it was in LA, I can only hope that  this sort of thing is just done more often here in the PNW. Except that I  really only listen to a national program just before Marketplace (way to many adds  these days, what do I donate for?) at 6.30, so there isn't really much  time to get a healthy dose of the we love our soldiers fair. Yet, this drivel is fed to me, and I admit it plays with my emotions too which may be why I dislike it so, on a quite frequent basis. I remember the kid that used to go wild ginger hunting in some godforsaken beautiful eastcoast redneck/Indian hero setting. Then he came back in a bag.
I wonder what the statistics of a survey of NPR stories would result in. Can we get some eager communications graduate to count npr war porn please? I would love to be wrong this time. But like my friend Z. says "I am always right, once I thought I was wrong, but I was mistaken".
Disclaimer 1: No, I am not talking about getting off on war when I talk about War Porn.
Disclaimer 2: Stop playing bugles to make me feel bad for a kid whose only mission in life was to kill or be killed. Brave, gallant even, but I would prefer some real porn any day of the week.
Footnote 1: Here is the only other guy writing about War Porn. A somewhat different outlook on matters should be assumed.
 
 
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