I was almost feeling sorry for NPR and the CPB until this morning, en route to the grocery at 7:45 a.m. because that’s how I do things, and I heard some chirpy report from a Washington correspondent, who made reference to the presidunce’s talk of “annexing Canada.” Her words, not his.
And I thought, shit, just stick a fork in this outfit now. Let them go under. I’d rather listen to music.
This is what we’re talking about when we talk about “sanewashing.” Canada is not available for annexation. It isn’t an unincorporated suburban area adjacent to a growing city, it’s a sovereign nation. And it’s pretty clear it intends to stay a sovereign nation. Making Canada part of the U.S., or attempting to do so, would be an act of war. It would require military troops, gunfire and death. If Cheetolini won’t stop talking about it, you have to report it. But report it correctly. Use the English language, where words have actual meanings.
Remember when NPR was good? I do. Now it’s like you can identify the big funders by the news budget. Oh, a boring story about wind energy? They’re pleasing an environmental nonprofit, hoping for a grant renewal. An endless piece on diversity efforts of no great consequence, in a place or field you don’t care about? Someone’s checking a box for their year-end goal list. Which is to say, I miss the personal essays, offbeat stories and other weirdness you used to hear on All Things Considered and Morning Edition, or the stuff they used to call “driveway moments.” They don’t do those anymore. There are no driveway moments.
That said, I do not miss Susan Stamberg’s stupid cranberry relish recipe at Thanksgiving, and in fact I don’t miss Susan Stamberg at all. If smugness had a voice, it was hers.
I woke up with a cold this weekend. I never get colds during the warm weather, except when I do. Thought it was allergies at first, but three days of antihistamines haven’t made a dent, so I suppose it’s a cold. (It’s not Covid; I tested.) So it was with a particular grumpiness that I noted the juxtaposition of two stories in Sunday’s NYT. The first, a story about the breakdown of the news ecosystem in one California town, Oakdale:
First the nearby newspapers shrank, and hundreds of local reporters in the region became handfuls. Then came the presidential elections of 2016 and 2020, and the pandemic; suddenly cable networks long deemed trustworthy were peddlers of fake news, on the right and the left.
…Now, in place of longtime TV pundits and radio hosts, residents turn to a new sphere of podcasters and online influencers to get their political news. Facebook groups for local events run by residents have replaced the role of local newspapers, elevating the county’s “keyboard warriors” to roles akin to editors in chief.
..As local news outlets shrank throughout the Central Valley in the 2010s, Facebook groups dedicated to local events started popping up in their place. And for years, they were harmless. But that changed in 2020.
What this story describes — misinformation, followed by attempts to correct/control it, followed by the flowering of even more Facebook groups, with names like UNCENSORED or UNFILTERED — is pretty much what’s happened in my own community. On the one hand, you could say it represents healthy pushback to narratives some find infuriating. On the other, it also represents the death of fact-based media. Here in Detroit, there are people who listen to police scanners all day and night, and report on what they hear on various social channels. Sometimes this is useful. Sometimes, when it’s slow, they throw in their own racist analysis. This is not useful.
The second story was pegged to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s latest real-estate purchase: A $23 million house in Washington D.C. This follows his Tahoe house, his Hawaii house, and god knows what other houses. He has become one of the richest people in the world off a technology that has ruined the news media and leads the people of Oakdale, California to fly at one another’s throats.
What a legacy.
I cannot wait for this cold to run its course. Have a good week, all.
jim said on May 4, 2025 at 5:50 pm
Many NPR show remain quite good in my opinion. The weekday morning news, 1A and Science Friday in particular. And, it’s not just the national shows that are endangered. Her in Colorado we still have a great many really informative stories on climate, social justice, immigration and state politics. It would be a damn shame for that to go away.
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Jeff Gill said on May 4, 2025 at 6:15 pm
Full disclosure: I made Susan Stamberg’s cranberry relish recipe. Once. It was enough.
If you’re in central Ohio*, I would commend a free subscription to our Thursday newsletter, which is free. Denison University & some valiant faculty & staff are supplementing the local news in this county, which we sincerely hope is a model that can be replicated in many places around the country:
https://www.thereportingproject.org/coming-soon-the-reporting-projects-weekly-newsletter/
*Obviously, we’re pretty focused on Licking County, but you can pick up quite a bit from all around the Columbus region from us.
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Jason T. said on May 4, 2025 at 6:58 pm
Back in 2020, I wrote for Columbia Journalism Review about how Facebook “news” groups are corroding communities. It was bad then and it’s only gotten worse.
https://www.cjr.org/special_report/year-of-fear-chapter-19-facebook-undermined-conversation-in-mckeesport.php
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Jason T. said on May 4, 2025 at 7:01 pm
And as Steve wrote today at No More Mister Nice Blog, the information war being conducted on Facebook is entirely asymmetrical, a battle of propaganda (not news), and being won by the far-right:
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2025/05/if-you-want-to-understand-america-under.html
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Suzanne said on May 4, 2025 at 9:29 pm
I was listening to this today which fits in with the discussion here.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/on-being-with-krista-tippett/id150892556?i=1000705723868
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basset said on May 4, 2025 at 10:17 pm
Just back from Grandpa B’s memorial service in northern Michigan, where I was on the program delivering a few Ole & Lena jokes… he was a Swede & liked em, so why not?
He was a Scotch drinker too, nothing wrong with that, and Laphroaig was his favorite. When I first met him he drank Sheep Dip, which wasn’t bad but as he aged he got into the better stuff, peaking with a bottle of 25-year-old Laphroaig which several of us were privileged to taste. The bottle turned up as we were clearing out his assisted-living apartment and of course we had another little nip, which prompted me to tell Mrs. B and her brother that we were probably the only family in America at that moment for whom supper was $500 Scotch and frozen pizza.
Brought back a bench vise out of his basement shop, a Desmond Simplex made in Urbana, Ohio between 1931 and 1964. Right now it’s in pieces in the shed, soaking in cleaning vinegar to get some of the grease & dirt off, after which I will clean it up, repaint it, and put it to use.
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Peter said on May 4, 2025 at 11:21 pm
Basset, I am sorry about your loss…but Ole and Lena jokes?
Way back in the day I had a Swedish client who loved to tell Ole and Sven jokes, and by golly a few of them were hilarious.
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Brandon said on May 5, 2025 at 2:16 am
I do not miss Susan Stamberg’s stupid cranberry relish recipe–Nancy
I made Susan Stamberg’s cranberry relish recipe. Once. It was enough.–Jeff
Given the ingredients, it sounds like an acquired taste. Yet intriguing.
“Mama Stamberg’s Relish Faces Its Toughest Critics: NPR Staffers.”
Well, it’s not Jell-O — and it’s not your run-of-the-mill, namby-pamby cranberry-sugar-orange recipe, either.
Mama Stamberg’s relish has guts: cranberries, sugar, sour cream, onion and … wait for it … horseradish.
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Mark P said on May 5, 2025 at 2:49 am
I didn’t watch much of the news, but I don’t recall seeing anywhere that a number of people walked out of Trump’s commencement speech at the University of Alabama. Did any of you see it covered?
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basset said on May 5, 2025 at 3:01 am
Peter, as far as I know memorials don’t have to be 100-percent deadly serious. And one of mine was an Ole and Sven, about the time they were down at the corner tap watching the Twins on a Saturday afternoon and Lena called looking for Ole…but surely you know that one.
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Peter said on May 5, 2025 at 6:24 am
I’m sorry it sounded that way – I meant I was impressed you told an Ole and Lena joke at the service.
I’m also sorry I don’t know the corner tap joke.
Here’s the one I do remember:
Ole and Sven are talking one time, and Ole says that his relationship with Lena isn’t going anywhere – they go on nice dates and all, dont’cha know, but sometimes they just hold hands and…that’s about it. He just doesn’t know what he can say to move things along.
Sven says “Ole I know just the thing for you. The next time you go for a drive, you stop at a spot and open your zipper. You just let your pecker do the talking, and it will be fine.”
Well, next date Ole does just what Sven suggested. However, it didn’t go as planned – after Ole opens his zipper, Lena says: “Ole Olson, I just have three words for you: TAKE ME HOME!”
Ole starts the car up and they drive back to St. Paul. Neither of them say anything during the trip. Ole’s thinking to himself: “That Sven Svenson. I had a good thing going, and he gives me this dumb advice and now look what happened.”
They make it back to Lena’s house, and Ole walks her to her door. He then says to her: “OK Lena, but I just have two words for you: LET GO!!”
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Jeff Gill said on May 5, 2025 at 7:23 am
Humor at a funeral is a good sign. Hat tip, basset!
I didn’t have the option to bring any of my dad’s tools home, which I will long regret and still occasionally dream of. Most of them, power and hand, found good homes for which I can be thankful. Likewise, my son won’t want any of my hundreds of books, so what goes around comes around . . .
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basset said on May 5, 2025 at 7:36 am
Peter, that reminds me of the one where one of Lena’s girlfriends asks her if she and Ole ever had mutual climax… she thinks for a minute and says “no, we had State Farm.”
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ROGirl said on May 5, 2025 at 9:20 am
Didn’t that cranberry relish recipe come from an old Craig Claiborne recipe in the New York Times?
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Jeff Borden said on May 5, 2025 at 9:33 am
The greatest funeral service I ever attended was for my friend, Doug Robarchek, who had been a columnist at the Charlotte Observer as a cap to a life in journalism that took him from Nebraska to California to Massachusetts to Florida and then North Carolina. His ex-wife, a member of a Presbyterian Church, arranged the service weeks after he died. Doug had written his own eulogy and it was delivered by his best friend, who took a swig of Scotch from a flask before he began, something Doug would’ve done. it was funny, it was poignant and it was defiantly atheist, as Doug had often observed that if there really were a God, he was a mean S.O.B. Damn, it was funny. At one point, Doug asked through his friend if anyone needed a drink, because he sure did. Almost every hand shot up. And, instead of solemn music, everyone danced out of the church to some zydeco music.
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basset said on May 5, 2025 at 9:51 am
This one was several months after the fact… he passed in October and his will specified that the ceremony would be held at his favorite ski lodge, took this long for the room to open up and even then we had to have it on a weekday.
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Deborah said on May 5, 2025 at 10:54 am
I went to the funeral of a guy who made a lot of interesting things for a living. If you needed someone to make something for a project that might be a little out of the ordinary, you could call Carl and he’d figure out how to make it and it would be fantastic. His friends and family filled the funeral home with stuff that he had made, of course there was a full size, full body Elvis sculpture or two that you could take a selfie with, among lots of other crazy things, and he made the urn for his ashes, he had a brain tumor and was ill for about a year so he had the time. I don’t remember if anyone gave any eulogies, it was just about the crazy stuff he made and it was always well made. There was a full bar, it was amazing.
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Peter said on May 5, 2025 at 12:15 pm
Some years back I wanted my wife’s tombstone to say “I’M WITH STUPID” and an arrow pointing to my grave, and my tombstone would say “ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY TOMBSTONE”.
But I’ve changed. I want to get a gravesite at Rosehill Cemetery that you could see from the Union Pacific train tracks, and have a solar powered electronic tombstone: HERE LIES, (my name), TIME, TEMP, SEE YOU SOON!!
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Deborah said on May 5, 2025 at 12:27 pm
I realize now that when I said you could take selfies with the Elvis sculptures I misspoke, as they say. There weren’t phone cameras then, I didn’t have one anyway. Someone took a polaroid of you, I think I still have mine, I have no idea where.
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Sherri said on May 5, 2025 at 2:48 pm
My MIL had ALS, so we knew she was going to die for some time. We had a big party for her last birthday, that was effectively her funeral, but she got to attend. It was much better than her actual funeral, which was much more about the husband she had married 12 years ago than about her. My husband, her only child, was kind of an afterthought.
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Sherri said on May 5, 2025 at 2:54 pm
I saw a headline go by from Time: What to know about Trump’s plan to reopen Alcatraz.
There is no plan to reopen Alcatraz. There never will be a plan to reopen Alcatraz. Trump just said it to sound tough. Yet, news organizations act like they have to treat his every utterance as a policy, not just blathering. Just because he says something doesn’t mean it’s a plan, a policy, realistic, legal, constitutional, feasible, or will happen in any way.
Just like when Elon talk about Mars. It’s not real, it’s serving a different purpose.
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Brandon said on May 5, 2025 at 3:32 pm
@ROGirl: Apparently so.
“Mama” Stamberg got credit for this wildly popular concoction until the true inventor, Craig Claiborne, gently reminded Susan that it was his recipe from a 1959 New York Times column. In 1993, Mr. Claiborne told Mrs. Stamberg: “I am simply delighted. We have gotten more mileage, you and I, out of that recipe than almost anything I’ve printed.”
It is a somewhat peculiar recipe, and the color is disconcerting. It is a vibrant Pepto-Bismol pink, but it is delicious and I make it every year to go with turkey, and later, roast beef sandwiches. I like to imagine Mr. Claiborne foraging for cranberries in the bogs of Napeague long ago.
Craig Claiborne’s Cranberry Relish, Via Mama Stamberg
Makes approximately two and a half cups.
2 cups whole raw cranberries
1 small onion, coarsely chopped
3/4 cup sour cream
1/2 cup sugar
2 Tbsp. horseradish
Grind cranberries and onion together to a coarse puree. Add everything else and mix. Place in plastic container and freeze. On Thanksgiving morning, transfer to the refrigerator. When you serve it, it should still have some icy slivers in it.
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Deborah said on May 5, 2025 at 3:45 pm
Not that I’d ever make it but what kind of onion? White? Red? Yellow?
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Brandon said on May 5, 2025 at 4:52 pm
It doesn’t say, but whatever you like, I guess.
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Dexter Friend said on May 5, 2025 at 5:00 pm
Alcatraz, well, maybe, but for sure Trump is “personally, with donations”, going to build an elaborate ballroom at 1600.
Cold pills…I was really sick years ago and got some antihistamines at the local, and had to sign forms because people were making illicit drugs from that shit. That stuff made my heart race and miss beats. It affects some like that.
Airport report: My old neighbor, now of Columbus, just returned from Milan after a whirlwind tour of Italia.
They were to fly back through Newark, of course got cancelled, and had to fly to London and on to Chicago and Columbus. He reports he is dragging today after 36 hours at airports. And yes, he and his large entourage of family had it better than most this past weekend.
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ROGirl said on May 5, 2025 at 5:41 pm
Considering that the original recipe is from 1959, it was likely a yellow onion because that was probably the only kind available in grocery stores. It should have remained buried in the Times archives.
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Sherri said on May 5, 2025 at 6:42 pm
We made it once. All you taste is the horseradish, so it really doesn’t matter what kind of onion.
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basset said on May 5, 2025 at 6:57 pm
Well, nobody asked for the finish of the tap joke but I don’t like to leave anything unfinished so…
anyway, Ole takes the call and it’s about what the boys expected. yes dear, I’m about to head home, l’ll pick up milk and bread, you can imagine. then Ole hangs up the phone, drains his beer, wads up the empty can and throws it in the corner. Sven asks Ole what he is doing :
“Well, I just got the two -minute warning so I’m
throwing out of bounds to stop the clock.”
Try the lutefisk, we’re here all week…
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Sherri said on May 5, 2025 at 8:26 pm
The Onion continues to do a better job than traditional media at covering Trump. Their headline? Trump Vows to Reopen Joann Fabrics as a Prison.
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FDChief said on May 5, 2025 at 9:52 pm
Never been a huge NPR listener (in the Before Times I would occasionally catch one or two of the “serial” shows like Car Talk or Prairie Home Companion, which I enjoyed but not enough to seek them out) but their news division has ALWAYS been that way.
We called them “Nice Polite Republicans” because that’s how the reportage always leaned; any GOP nonsense, no matter how ridiculous, would be reported as if it were an actual thing rather than the chittering of monkeys with prion disease.
They were the polite version – the radio equivalent of a David Brooks bowtie-and-glasses Republican – but they also refused to call out the increasingly demented wingnut elements even as they took over the whole party. I’d end up shouting at the radio “Goddamn it, it’s not “controversial”! It’s a fucking lie! Call it a lie, dammit! What IS your malfunction!”
Eventually I tired of the stress, and NPR “News”.
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Jenine said on May 6, 2025 at 10:00 am
@FDChief: yeah. I miss having it on for company
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Mark P said on May 6, 2025 at 11:00 am
Cokie Roberts was the one on NPR that I couldn’t stand. She would spout platitudes and institutionally accepted wisdom as if she had a unique and authoritative insight.
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Jeff Borden said on May 6, 2025 at 12:16 pm
I’m sure you’ll all be shocked to learn that tRump proposed reopening Alcatraz right after “Escape From Alcatraz” aired on a South Floriduh TV station.
Page 1 today in the NYT notes how Europeans are boycotting American brands, just as the Canadians are doing. We’re going to be a generation or two repairing everything he wrecks…assuming we don’t all die early deaths because of Brain Worm Bobby.
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LindaG said on May 6, 2025 at 12:18 pm
Garrison Keillor told a lot of Ole and Lena jokes. The one I remember is Ole is on his deathbed while Lena is baking a pie. Ole smells the pie and asks Lena to bring him a piece. “No,” she says. “It’s for the funeral.”
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basset said on May 6, 2025 at 12:24 pm
well, yeah, but Keillor told em to mock the people who actually did like Ole & Lena stories… he was way too sophisticated to enjoy them as jokes himself.
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FDChief said on May 6, 2025 at 12:26 pm
Jeff: it’s looking increasingly likely that we will have neither a flu nor a Covid vaccine prepared for this coming flu/URI season. I didn’t think these chucklefucks could piss me off more than they already have, but that’d do it.
Either or both can kill me at my age. Don’t want the jab, you Bronze Age ignorant cluck? Don’t get one.
But make it impossible for me to get one if I want to? You can fuck right off with that.
God, how I despise these people!
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Julie Robinson said on May 6, 2025 at 2:09 pm
Alcatrez closed in 1963, and I think I read there isn’t even running water anymore. The idea he’d have it open in three months is about the same as solving inflation and the wars his first week, which he also promised. He’s just faffing around, hoping people won’t notice all the dumpster fires.
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Dexter Friend said on May 6, 2025 at 4:35 pm
In 1970,my year in California, Native Americans took over Alcatraz. In 1996 we went to San Francisco, not knowing reservations months ahead were needed to tour the rock. I did buy a cool thick hoodie near Aquatic Park for $5.
All these deportations made unlawfully and incorrectly…just wait until Trump/Homan start deporting Native Americans just for their looks. Just wait. It’ll happen.
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David C said on May 6, 2025 at 5:28 pm
Oh fuck. What at time to have bottoms up Pete as SecDef, ‘lil Marco as Secretary of State, and Cadet Bonespurs as POTUS.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/asia/india-pakistan-kashmir-conflict-hnk-intl
I’ve only heard of Trump’s behavior at his meeting with PM Carney. I can’t listen to the bastard’s voice, but I understand he was at his worst.
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Mark P said on May 6, 2025 at 6:32 pm
Someone asked what would have happened if Trump had been president when the Cuban missile crisis happened. I can think of two possibilities: the end of the world, or Trump as a doormat.
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FDChief said on May 6, 2025 at 7:48 pm
I think there’s a non-zero chance that the Kashmir region goes up in flames; this sounds like way more damage than India did in their 2019 strikes.
But I’m not sure that it makes much difference who’s running the show here. Both the potential combatants have been very difficult to influence from outside. Ironically Putin might be the single most likely possible influencer; he’s evading a lot of sanctions by going through Modi in India, and I’ll be he doesn’t want to risk Pakistan glassing some of his profits.
And I’ll bet Xi is feeling like “How am I the only normal one in the middle of these nuts”.
We’ll have to see if the Pakistanis respond “maximally”. That would be…bad.
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Jeff Gill said on May 6, 2025 at 8:43 pm
On the granular level, our county Children Services levy* hit 61% in favor with early/absentee voting; as today’s tallies arrive at the Board of Elections, we sagged down to 56%, but at about half, we’re up to 59.5% supporting another ten years of funding, and I’m breathing normally again. Ready to dump the last of my bourbon into a glass with little or no ice when we get the results at 75% of precincts reporting.
*Why do we have to vote every ten years to support care of abused or neglected children? God and the Ohio Statehouse know, I sure don’t. Ohio’s state funded support of Children Services is infamously 50th of 50 states; if we DOUBLED state (versus local, property tax levy support, which is what I’m trying a third time to pass here) support of Children Services? We’d STILL be in 50th place. 49th? Oh, you think Mississippi? Or Arkansas? Nope. It’s . . . (wait for it) . . . Michigan. A bitter irony, indeed.
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Jeff Gill said on May 6, 2025 at 9:32 pm
YES! We passed, 55% in favor of supporting the county Children Services levy. Licking County thanks you…
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Ann said on May 6, 2025 at 11:41 pm
Congratulations on the levy, Jeff.
I just got over an extremely unpleasant cold. Kept trying remedies for the symptoms I had yesterday, which of course were replaced by the ones I got today. Aleve helped more than anything. And saline spray. A week if you treat it; seven days if you don’t. That was it.
Funerals.It makes such a difference what profession you were in. I grew up among English professors, and they could quote poetry, and tell some anecdotes, and tie it all together with a quote from John Donne, and you really knew the dear departed and felt they’d been sent off in style. Once out of that world I became a funeral critic. Prominent judge, but the service was the same platitudes you could give for every Rotarian. The AIDS memorials were better, because no one cared what the rules were any more.
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LAMary said on May 7, 2025 at 10:44 am
I’m still alive and quietly bitchy in LA and since I’m a retired person now I thought I would pop in a catch up.
NPR is still better than most stuff on the radio but one of the local NPR stations here has changed its call letters to LAIST.
The manager of the station is very present the programming other than the national stuff. Even before trump went after NPR, LAIST was in fund raising mode constantly. KCRW, the other NPR station, has much better non network programming. I proudly wear my merch.
Speaking of merch,the merch roadie son was very excited to let me know that the Mongolian Throat Singing Acid Rock band will be playing in Groningen, Netherlands. Why was this exciting news? I have a bunch of recently discovered relatives in Groningen. I let them know I could get them comped for the concert but they didn’t seem to be very interested.
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