Cursing capitalism: In '09, critics let loose on golden goose

NY Post ^ | January 2, 2010 | Jonah Goldberg

[Scanian]

On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio. Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by now familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality and theft. When the report was over, "Morning Edition" host Steve Inskeep summarized it with a tart, "the decade in capitalism."

I don't want to single out Ins- keep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing "capitalism" to its alleged sins.

[Darkwolf377]

When I can’t avoid it, listening to NPR never fails to make me want to punch someone. Their smarmy, smug, above-it-all elitism wouldn’t be nearly so intolerable if I didn’t know they got all their money from (ugh!) those horrible RICH people.

[detective]

I've never understood why any corporation would help to fund NPR. Or for that matter why any American would contribute to NPR. NPR has one purpose, to attack and weaken America and those who make America work. Capitalism is just one of the terms NPR uses to deride and ridicule this country and to try to weaken and destroy it. And the politicians keep taking our money to fund it.

[CPOSharky]

And to whom did all those purveyors of that “depressing slog of greed, venality and theft” send their millions of campaign donations?

[driftless2]

I’d rather be governed by one hundred of the greediest people on Wall Street than one hundred of the best well-meaning politicians in Washington who want to “help” me.

[driftless2]

"NPR"

I tuned into NPR one day last month for the first time in about a decade. The first three shows had themes of (1) why corporate greed was evil (2) why "Thomas the Tank Engine" (a very old British cartoon character) was a patriarchal thug and bad for girls and (3) whether hunting was moral or not. I didn't stick around to find out if the wonderful fair-minded people at NPR thought hunting was moral, but I can draw conclusions.