Saturday, December 31, 2011
News Flash - There's Nothing Here
according to a couple of goofballs, I guess we can just shrug it off, but I was wondering... Did anyone else besides me just hear a caller from Middletown call into Car Talk on NPR, and have Click and Clack the Tapat brothers comment that "according to people we know there is nothing there" ... ?!? Really? Ugh!
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I heard way up here in the Northeast Kingdom of VT. They are sadly out of touch. Their producer needs a talking to.
I think the caller should have defended Middletown -- Click and Clack were just being their funny selves.
Love the title of the blog entry given Middletown's "It's All Here" slogan.
If you're going to dis them at least get their name right. It's Tappet not tapat.
Ironically, the producer Doug Berman is a Wesleyan alum, class of 1984. See http://www.npr.org/people/4459873/doug-berman. I'd guess conditions have improved around town since his time here, particularly downtown.
A couple of years ago, the brothers, Berman and others from NPR did a fund-raiser show in Crowell Hall at Wesleyan, to benefit Green Street Arts Center (see http://articles.courant.com/2009-05-22/news/dougberman.art_1_public-radio-campus-station-wait. I seem to recall that one of the brothers had a child who attended Wes, so perhaps the on-air comment was an inside joke, not to be take literally.
I took it as a joke--I take everything they say as a joke--but I work in Middletown and I know better.
My advice: don't listen to NPR; the whole operation is a big joke at taxpayer expense.
The show is supposed to be funny.
One of the brothers has a daughter who graduated from Wesleyan. Middletown has come up several times over the years.
I've listened to them for at least 15 years, they say similar stuff all the time about places coast to coast.
Karen, I'm getting to your comment, but first, Steadyjohn: NPR receives no direct funding from the federal government for operations. Local stations get a tiny percentage of their funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which itself gets a smidgen of anybody's taxes. You could look it up on a fact-based website. Sarah Palin et al spread this myth whenever they want to rile the faithful. Be an independent thinker, Steadyjohn. It's what our nation's founders would have wanted.
Okay, Karen! I heard the show today, and I was surprised, even though I've been known to complain about M'town myself now and then. The comment was ironic, following on the heels of the huge success of Middnight on Main.
As a few folks have written here, I think they might be operating on old info from the 80's when there was not a whole lot to do off-campus. That was when Tom's son was here. I saw them when they were here recently for a Green St. fundraiser, and got to talk for quite a while to Ray, who couldn't have been nicer. My impression was that they got here, did the fundraiser, and left.
I did post what I thought was a reasonable and cogent rebuttal to Elizabeth's misinformation about NPR but I see you have chosen not to publish it;;not the first time my comments haven't seen the light of day either.
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