Neal Conan

New NPR President Gary Knell made an appearance on their afternoon talk show Talk of the Nation on Friday (his first day) to give the appearance of transparency and responsiveness and to build morale after scandals such as the Juan Williams firing and the deeply embarrassing Muslim Brotherhood sting video, which led to several firings.

Knell just strained credulity beyond the breaking point by claiming NPR is not an advocacy organization, but a network of "fairness and accuracy and honesty," and it's "probably barred by our charter." It's correct that the founding Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 called for objectivity and balance in "all programming of a controversial nature," but NPR has followed that legal language about as seriously as Bill Clinton has upheld his marital vows. One might say this is a promising rhetorical start -- until you listen daily to the product right now.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation devoted a segment on Tuesday afternoon to the question “What Happened to the Political Left?” For answers, host Neal Conan brought on the leftist professor Michael Kazin and Katrina Vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation magazine. It didn’t get hilarious until Kazin made the claim that nowhere in Flyover Country -- in Iowa or Nebraska, for example -- can you hear a left-winger on the radio.

Somehow they all forgot that NPR stations are taking our tax dollars and insuring these left-wing voices are on the radio, including Iowa Public Radio and Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET) Radio.

On Wednesday afternoon's Talk of the Nation on National Public Radio, NPR political director Ken Rudin told host Neal Conan that of course, President Obama was "exactly right" in his El Paso speech to say Republicans are never satisfied on immigration, and want a moat with alligators in it:

CONAN: And this is not likely to pass as a piece of legislation but likely to be pretty effective as a piece of campaign rhetoric.

RUDIN: Well, remember, every moat counts. We always say that in November. But actually, that also was a very good Boehner impersonation.

Former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed found himself in a debate on Wednesday afternoon's Talk of the Nation show on National Public Radio. The debate wasn't with a second guest. It was with TOTN host Neal Conan, who simply refused repeatedly to allow Reed to state that Barack Obama and his attorney general, Eric Holder, have decided not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Conan couldn't abide the concept that the Justice Department was failing to defend federal law as it currently stands.

The fight began when Reed was asked about Gov. Mitch Daniels, who annoyed social conservatives by saying there should be a "truce" on social issues in the Republican presidential debate:  

In the very heart of the pro-life community, there is nothing they wanted less than another shooting of an abortionist. An unhinged vigilante's shooting of notorious Kansas late-term abortion "provider" George Tiller prompted an avalanche of press releases from pro-life groups denouncing the killing.

Why bother? Let's face it. The national media had zero interest in spotlighting a pro-life spokesman expressing horror, because let's face it, they don't believe it. Instead, as with ABC, they found anonymous citizens on the website Twitter saying "Oh, happy, day. Tiller the baby killer is dead." Another wrote, "God bless the gunman."

It was time for a barrage of liberal mudslinging. Keith Olbermann started his MSNBC program with these words: "A religious jihad by fundamentalist crusaders who believe that murder is justified, their acts of violence having the intended effect of changing behavior. Our fifth story on the Countdown: Not the Taliban, not Hamas, not al Qaeda."

On Inauguration Day, National Public Radio wanted to know how the Iraqi people would greet the American transition of power. On the afternoon talk show Talk of the Nation, host Neal Conan talked to NPR Baghdad Bureau Chief Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, and her street interviews led her to the idea that Iraq was unanimous: not a single Iraqi was grateful for the removal of Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship:

Any Iraqi that you speak to on the street will tell you, and I ask them this question, was the war worth it for you? Did this invasion, do you feel, give you a better life? And across the board, I didn't find one Iraqi who said to me, actually, I'm glad this happened. Most Iraqis have paid the price of, you know, if you want to call it their freedom, in blood, the blood of their relatives.