I love NPR. It is just so soothing. When I want to get worked up, excited, heated and have my beliefs reinforced, I watch one of the TV networks that are designed to do only that. News has become a product, with distinct flavors, designed to appeal to someone's "taste." NPR is like a mental palette cleanser.
Some may say that NPR has a liberal bias. Maybe so, but that's not my point. They have a bias towards being CALM. I love driving around with NPR on the radio. I speed less. I beep less. I love how the most bizarre and detailed stories are given all the time in the world to unfold. I sometimes sit in parking lots or in my driveway waiting for the stories to finish. No commercials come on, blaring and shouting words very fast and loud (they are paying good money so they have to get my attention somehow!). Even NPR comedy is of the serene and polite variety. "Prairie Home Companion" was, for many years, the only real picture I had of the Midwest. As a Catholic from Brooklyn I didn't know Lutherans could be so funny.
Apart from traffic reports, I stopped listening to other talk radio years ago. The nutty, cranky, lunatic fringe seems to have convinced programmers on AM radio that only nutty, cranky lunatics listen to AM radio. Maybe they are right. Maybe I am not being very nice by saying so. Maybe I should go listen to NPR and calm myself down. If you see me serenely staring off in the distance at a red light, or in a parking lot, or in my driveway, I am just living "This American Life."
