The Downfall of NPR Unpacked, MLB Pitcher's Pedophilia Ignored By Awards Show, Is the Joker Sequel a Musical?, Can Caitlin Clark Elevate the WNBA Value a la Messi & the MLS? (The Five for 04/12/24)
Plus, Apple TV+ has another banger of a sci-fi series, a surprisingly intriguing Beach Boys documentary hits Disney+.
Hey, welcome to The Five.
It’s Friday, so let’s dive into Culture & Commentary.
[one]
I’ve always been some sort of political conservative…but also have enjoyed media from a variety of sources since I was a kid, which included NPR…a place for a wonderful mix of audio documentaries (the true crime hit Serial is probably responsible for both the growth of podcasting, and of suburban white women being obsessed with murders), long-form interviews, investigative journalism…and Tiny Desk, one of best music discovery outlets on the planet.
These days, I can’t tell you the last time I tuned in. Turns out, I’m not alone. The taxpayer-funded outlet now only serves a very narrow network of taxpayers.
It’s true NPR has always had a liberal bent, but during most of my tenure here, an open-minded, curious culture prevailed. We were nerdy, but not knee-jerk, activist, or scolding.
In recent years, however, that has changed. Today, those who listen to NPR or read its coverage online find something different: the distilled worldview of a very small segment of the U.S. population.
If you are conservative, you will read this and say, duh, it’s always been this way.
But it hasn’t.
For decades, since its founding in 1970, a wide swath of America tuned in to NPR for reliable journalism and gorgeous audio pieces with birds singing in the Amazon. Millions came to us for conversations that exposed us to voices around the country and the world radically different from our own—engaging precisely because they were unguarded and unpredictable. No image generated more pride within NPR than the farmer listening to Morning Edition from his or her tractor at sunrise.
Back in 2011, although NPR’s audience tilted a bit to the left, it still bore a resemblance to America at large. Twenty-six percent of listeners described themselves as conservative, 23 percent as middle of the road, and 37 percent as liberal.
By 2023, the picture was completely different: only 11 percent described themselves as very or somewhat conservative, 21 percent as middle of the road, and 67 percent of listeners said they were very or somewhat liberal. We weren’t just losing conservatives; we were also losing moderates and traditional liberals.
An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.
The public had a lot of chances since 2020 to lose faith in NPR’s integrity. The network worked hard to counter the lab-leak theory for the origins of COVID, and were dead wrong…and they spent the pandemic platforming Anthony Fauci and NIH head Francis Collins spewing falsehoods (remember when Fauci said NOT to wear masks early on, then reversed himself?)
Senior Business Editor Uri Berliner explained on Bari Weiss’ Honestly podcast that NPR changed their policies after George Floyd’s death in 2020, removing prohibitions on reporters donating to political campaigns and joining public protests (which have been in place for decades to prevent accusations of bias). The organization actually ENCOURAGED journalists to become activists.
The “Public” in “National Public Radio” voted by turning their attention elsewhere, nd the audience for NPR keeps dipping every quarter. Despite floundering reach, the outlet still does produce some excellent content, as I found out I checked out NPR.org for the first time in probably a year, and was pretty impressed with this story on Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole and Drake and the state of “beef” in hip hop in 2024.
In the 2010’s, fast food chains ranging from Starbucks to Papa Johns were forced to retool recipes and close stores during operating hours to re-train staff on how to consistently create a product the public would want. In both cases, the leadership released a statement about the problem, and how they're fixing it.
NPR should do the same thing. But they won’t, because the organization is staffed by Ivy League grads would rather call the truck driver a racist homophobe for turning them off than deal with why the average Joe and Jane no longer trusts the outlet’s reporting. Spoiler alert…the audience aren’t bigots, the product coming over the FM dial is just crap now.
[two]
Legendary Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens made an appearance at some country music awards show this week (who cares which one, all awards shows are stupid) to honor his late friend Toby Keith.
This move was met with protest, because Roger Clemens is a pedophile who belongs in prison due to a decade long-affair with country singer Mindy McCreedy, which started when the singer was 15, allegedly.
A successful major label artist in the mid ’90s to the early 2000s, Mindy McCready committed suicide in 2013, taking her own life at the age of 37. She also reportedly had a long term, 10-year relationship with Roger Clemens starting when she was only 15, and when Roger was 28 with a wife and two children.
In a May 2008 article in the New York Daily News, the outlet reported via numerous sources that Roger Clemens commenced a relationship with Mindy McCready in 1990. McCready was originally from Fort Myers in Florida where numerous major league baseball teams conduct Spring Training.
McCready was singing in a karaoke bar when Clemens and some of his teammates walked in. Clemens reportedly immediately became enamored with the underage McCready, with one of the sources for the story saying it was “love at first sight.” Clemens threw a shirt with his signature onto the stage where McCready was performing. This is how the relationship allegedly began, and would continue on for a decade.
The report in the New York Daily News went on to spell out further details of the relationship. The next day, a followup story was published, with McCready saying, “I cannot refute anything in the story.”
On May 5th after the initial reports, Roger Clemens released a statement through a spokesman that didn’t refute the affair, but also did not confirm it.
“Even though these articles contain many false accusations and mistakes, I need to say that I have made mistakes in my personal life for which I am sorry,” Clemens said. “I have apologized to my family and apologize to my fans. Like everyone, I have flaws. I have sometimes made choices which have not been right.”
Clemens allegedly even skipped out on his wife and kids to VACATION with an underage McCreedy in Las Vegas, who barely had a driver’s license.
Fast forward to today… the biggest consequence Clemens faced was being denied a spot in the MLB Hall of Fame (almost certainly because of this disgusting affair), while Mindy’s body is cold in the ground. The singer believed she would marry Roger, which never happened. She took her own life in 2013. Looking back at her catalog, McCready’s biggest song certainly appears to be a cry for help from a then-21-year old Mindy, seven years into a toxic relationship.
If there were any justice in this situation, Clemens would be in prison. Or, at the very least, a disgraced celebrity living in exile. Instead, he gets airtime at awards shows.
Lead me not into temptation
Heaven help me to be strong
I can fight all that I'm feelin'
But I can't do it alone
Help me break this spell that I'm under
Guide my feet and hold me tight
I need ten thousand angels watchin' over me tonight
[three]
I’m assuming that unless you’ve been held hostage by Hamas for the last six months and were just released, you know about Caitlin Clark’s meteoric rise to fame, breaking the all time NCAA scoring record and drawing in the adoration of the nation with the most watched basketball game since 2019. You
Yup, that means the girl from Des Moines bested not just men’s college basketball, but the entire NBA for the last five years.
Clark is as scandal-free of an athlete as it’s possible to be…and yet she’s getting a LOT of hate…from other women basketball players.
WNBA legend Sheryl Swoopes incorrectly trashed Clark’s scoring record, claiming it doesn’t count since Caitlin was a “fifth year” senior (she wasn’t). The former record holder, Lynette Wood (who set the previous record for Kansas), said Caitlin’s record didn’t break hers because the basketball was a different size (uhhh…wut?)
Sadly, the largest group of people who hate Caitlin Clark are…current WNBA players (see video above for a compilation of horrible comments). This is absurd, because Clark will boost TV ratings (and salaries) for players currently in that league.
What’s interesting is that women’s college basketball is becoming JUST AS popular as men’s college basketball, if you look at the numbers. But so far, that interest hasn’t transferred up to the WNBA, where this Family Guy sketch still holds pretty true:
Although they don’t get many eyeballs (or sell many tickets) the WNBA is good basketball…but the players aren’t really worth rooting for (looking at you, Brittney Greiner).
But Major League Soccer was in a similar boat nearly twenty years ago when one mega star (David Beckman) joined that league to completely change reality. A decade ago, the Houston Dyanmo sold for just $25 million, including the stadium. Now that Beckam and Inter Miami star Messi have built up the league, Houston’s MLS club is worth nearly a half a billion dollars.
Clark has the potential to do the same for the WNBA. But all she’s getting so far from her future peers in the league…is a lot of hate.
[four]
Funerals are for…honoring the dead. Not personal announcements. This includes if you were raised by Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner in a town where everyone screams PAY ATTENTION TO ME.
Let’s lay the trans issue aside here, and point out the hijacking of the funeral…which, sadly, the bottom of the barrel of Millennials and Gen-Z are REALLY bad about. Just search “Funeral selfie” on any social network.
I’ve told my cousins to build a funeral pyre on our 7th generation family farm, find a bagpiper and send my earthly remains up in smoke rather than pump my corpse full of chemicals that will just leach into the ground. And I’m not alone. A number of farmers I know in Pike County, IL have told their families to use a simple pine box, skip the funeral industry completely, and just dig a hole on family land.
Perhaps Millennials and Gen-Z (at least some of us) are so flippant about death because we’ve essentially outsourced what should be sacred ceremony to corporations that treat funerals like a company event, only sad.
Funeral announcements…and funeral selfies…are not the disease. Just a symptom of a society that has sterilized death and lost all notion of what ceremony means for loss and grieving.
If you want to push back against that…tell your family that when your time comes, you don’t want a corporate funeral. It’s that simple. How you do that is up to you, but there are increasing options for cremation or natural burial that don’t cost $15,000+ and place your final memorial ceremony on this earth in a sterile, storyless room run by a corporation.
[five]
As always, let’s head into the weekend with a pop culture roundup:
Woah. Todd Phillips is certainly one of the directors with a top level of diversity in his body of work, from comedy (The Hangover, Borat), to Oscar-bait biopics (Maestro) to musicals (A Star is Born).
But his biggest film, by a mile, was the 1970’s NYC crime thriller (disguised as a comic book flick) Joker. Rumors abounded that Phillips would make the sequel to the Billion dollar film a musical (huh?). That…certainly appears to be the case, with previous Phillips collaborator Lady GaGa lending her pipes and acting chops to this one as Harley Quinn in Joker: Folie a Duex, which looks to have a foot in three different genres: Crime Thriller, Comic Book and…Musical.
Gotta wait until October for this one.
I heard the Beach Boys some as a kid (back when my parents controlled the tape deck in the car), but know nothing about the band’s innovating production techniqaues or competition/rivalry with The Beatles. This looks doc looks pretty cool. 05/24 on Disney+/Hulu.
In my humble opinion, Joel Edgerton (Zero Dark Thirty, Warrior), Jennifer Connley (A Beautiful Mind, Top Gun: Maverick) and Alice Braga (I Am Legend, Elysium) look like a heck of a leading trio in Dark Matter, the latest of a string of Apple TV+ movies and shows just dominating the sci-fi genre.
Based on a bestselling novel (written by a guy that clearly loved Christoper Nolan’s Inception), about a guy stuck in alternate realities, trying to get home to his actual family (also the premise of the 90’s TV show Sliders). We’ve seen this story before, but it looks like the acting and cinematography will be top notch.
Catch it 05/08.
[new music]
I’ve been slowing the music coverage down a bit for The Five, featuring albums after I’ve had the time to digest them, rather than posting projects the day they drop. But this new Maggie Rogers is the exception to the rule, already earning rave reviews from Spin, Paste, Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, as well as British outlets like The Independent and NME.
Rogers was discovered by super-producer Pharrell (Kanye West, The Clipse) when he visited her college class, and has now turned out three highly acclaimed projects since 2019…making it feel like she may be the next female artist to fill stadiums, a la Adele and Taylor Swift.
Before Tyler Childers and Zach Bryan blew up the Americana genre into one of the most popular art forms in the world, Oklahoma native John Moreland was humbly winning over one fan at a time, picking out heartbreaking singer-songwriter ballads that pulled no punches (see below).
His latest effort, Visitor, is best enjoyed with a 5:30am coffee on the open road or a 10pm bourbon over ice. Expect to see this one pop up on year-end best-of lists.
Until the next one,
-sth