'Mature, Confident' NPR Still Angry At Their 'Pussies' In Charge

September 20th, 2012 7:18 PM

While Mitt Romney has declared that he would support defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, it seems strange that NPR’s program On The Media would devote its whole hour last weekend to rehashing a 2011 show exploring whether NPR has a liberal bias. (This is a bit like Julia Child having a show asking if escargot is correctly classified as French cuisine.)

Co-host Brooke Gladstone was still agreeing with Jon Stewart that NPR’s board was a “bunch of pussies” for firing people like NPR president Vivian Schiller (who trashed Juan Williams as mentally ill.) This, she said was not the act of a “mature, confident news organization.” Which raises the question: “mature” news organizations call their bosses “pussies”?

GLADSTONE: It seems to be the reflex of the NPR Board to fire any member of its staff who raises hackles in Washington, reigniting the argument over funding. Is that response the act of a mature, confident news organization? For instance, should it have fired NPR president Vivian Schiller? Frank Mankiewicz says no.

MANKIEWICZ: I don’t think this event should have been responsible for her fring. I think she was a very competent executive and she was taking NPR in the right direction.

GLADSTONE: Jon Stewart called NPR’s board a bunch of pussies.

MANKIEWICZ: A bunch of what?

GLADSTONE: Pussies.

MANKIEWICZ: Cookies?

GLADSTONE: Pussies!

MANKIEWICZ:Oh, pussies. Yeah, that may be true.

At the end of this clip on the radio show The Young Turks, Frank's son Ben Mankiewicz suggested his son would also have to have the word "cock" yelled at him three times before he would grasp the word.