A confession: I do not know the basis for Kim Kardashian's fame. She emerges from time to time from the infotainment smog of gossip magazines at the supermarket checkout stand when we pay our Saturday visit to Safeway for paper- and cleaning- supplies. I see references to her online. But apparently she was a guest on NPR's "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" program in mid-June, and this appearance has driven a vocal component of the public radio demographic to gibbering madness. (Look it up. I'm told that there are internet search engines out there.)
I can understand this. The NPR audience is mainly my age, and we look to public radio as a refuge from the celebrity-driven "culture" of the hoi polloi. At the same time, though, I think that the protests serve to reinforce the notion of epistemic closure that has so ill-served public discourse for going on a generation now.
I don't trot out the welcome wagon when cultural trailer trash wanders into my media neighborhood, but I'm also unwilling to set up barriers to the Joads. The NPR dissenters should consider the implications of their exclusionist stance.
cordially,
I can understand this. The NPR audience is mainly my age, and we look to public radio as a refuge from the celebrity-driven "culture" of the hoi polloi. At the same time, though, I think that the protests serve to reinforce the notion of epistemic closure that has so ill-served public discourse for going on a generation now.
I don't trot out the welcome wagon when cultural trailer trash wanders into my media neighborhood, but I'm also unwilling to set up barriers to the Joads. The NPR dissenters should consider the implications of their exclusionist stance.
cordially,