Memetic theory, as applied to NPR?

I love the last minute swerve.

Which, btw, demonstrates the biggest reason why teleology and evolutionary theory make such bad partners, and why you should suspect that any teacher or politician who is basing their (effectively religious) pronouncements on the (self-proclaimed) science of evolution doesn’t actually understand the science at all.

On the other hand, those who say that everyone has an agenda are usually the ones who desperately hope that it’s true.

For a second, I thought Grrrl had an Afro in the first panel.

@Rachel Me Too! And what an agenda THAT would have been :-)

Agenda Afro.
I smell a metaphor.

I have no comment.

I can just imagine the speaker folding its little (non-existent) arms in panel 6 as it turns away in a huff

What Would Baba O’Riley Do?

I have never understood why “having an agenda” is supposed to be a bad thing; as the penultimate panel suggests, Life is just matter and energy with an agenda and I’m nowhere cool enough to be Anti-Life.

NO TEXT BUT CONTEXT

Wow I like your comment Jack.

Eyes Derek with suspicion, trying to divine his agenda.

I feel it in my fingers
I feel it in my toes
agendas are all around me
and so the feeling grows

I, too, thought it was an afro; second thought: telsa mortal coil!

Those plastic water bottles contain estrogenic compounds, you know…

Nice to hear a recognition that NPR (and PBS, for that matter) do have an agenda.

@Jack Frieze: Everything does an agenda, NTTAWYT. Things whose food source is public funding are parasitic, though…

An agenda is just a goal, and a goal is just something you want… and isn’t wanting nothing.. giving up on life?

I want a hug.

aww now i want a hug!

Fund-raising and corporate underwriting are both ways of surviving for these broadcasters. I think the word “agenda” only applies to a media institution if they are doing something that supports a particular cause or behavior that has absolutely nothing to do with pleasing their fund-raising base.

Then again, if the mere survival tactics of large media operations pisses you off, why are you even switching on the TV or radio in the first place? It’s just going to piss you off since nothing but large institutions can survive on those airwaves.

Then again, maybe you like being pissed off.

Ugh, now I’m afraid I’m coming off as the biggest NPR fan ever. It’s true I like their content sometimes. But I’m also annoyed by how wealthy it skews, especially their economic stuff, UGH. And if there was instead a pirate radio station that broadcast things just because they WANTED to and was funded by NOTHING, I’d listen to that instead. Wait. That’s the internet. Oh, sweet! The internet!

Are things not supposed to have “agendas”? Are they just supposed to exist to make YOU feel better about yourself without expecting anything from you. Sure there’s a line, I don’t like being bombarded by advertisements almost everyone hour of my waking life, but I can accept them if my exposure helps support something I think is worthwhile. The rub is when the capital takes supremacy over the content. But producing something you care about and then trying to propogate and even profit off it isn’t a sinister thing to me.

Kathleen Hannah said something about how the people who complain about bands charging too much for albums and zines are the same people who don’t have to work because their parents pay their rent and they can use the copier machine for free at their dad’s office.

I’ve never donated to an NPR station, but I have supported individual podcasts, when my station shapes up and has more interesting programming (AND LESS FUCKING “PRARIE HOME COMPANION” AND “WHAT D’YA KNOW?”) I’ll donate to them too.

A meeting without an agenda is a huge waste of time. I suspect the same would be true of any media outlet.

If you’re interested in the agenda behind NPR and PBS, you could do better than to look at fair.org/blog, which pretty regularly reviews these organizations’ news coverage.

Wackadoodle,

Ya know, The annual joke show is pretty good.

I listen to NPR because I find their agenda similar to mine. NPR and I both want to keep Karl Kassell’s voicemail machine messages to ourselves.

oh, dorothy, tell it like it is, mama!

And the moral of the story is… if you have a lot of empty plastic bottles around, you drank too much beer and sound speakers start speaking to you!

“NPR doesn’t have an agenda.” –Juan Williams, before

She needs to be forced to live where nearly all the stations have been bought up by Clear Channel and what’s left over airs Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh and FoxNews. Given her socialist, nihilist bent, the rants would start to get a little more interesting just before her head explodes.