Thursday, October 21, 2010

All Things Apparently Are Not Considered

I won't go too much into Juan Williams' being fired by NPR, but instead will offer the following quote:

“A managed democracy is a wonderful thing… for the managers… and its greatest strength is a ‘free press’ when ‘free’ is defined as ‘responsible’ and the managers define what is ‘irresponsible’.”
--Professor Bernardo de la Paz on the subject of free press from The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

This is the second time in a week I've quoted Heinlein.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

But you left out my favorite Heinlein quote:

"Theology is never any help; it is searching in a dark cellar at midnight for a black cat that isn't there."

Genius!

Darren said...

Perhaps I left it out because it isn't apropos of anything I've been writing about? Just saying.

allen (in Michigan) said...

Between the George Soros announcement that he's buying NPR 100 nice, new reporters of doubtful loyalty and this epic fail, it hasn't been a good week for NPR.

I hope the new Congress remembers this when budget time rolls around.

Anonymous said...

@Allen
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/10/chart-of-the-day-3.html

allen (in Michigan) said...

@Anonymous
That's a nice chart. Too bad it's deliberate misinformation as evidenced by the careful wording "direct federal funding". Besides, if the percentage of "direct federal funding" is so vanishingly small then there should be very little in the way of objections to cutting that. After all, there's hardly a dearth of opinion outlets.

Oh, and leave us not forget those 100 new reporters whose loyalties are hardly likely to be in doubt.