Shame! Shame on MPBN in general and Mr. Charles Beck in particular!
... my letter to the BDN got published in the Sat/Sun BDN. I am sending the following cover letter to NPR in Washington, having given up complaining to Maine Public Radio.
J in Addison
National Public Radio
Dear sirs:
Shock and awe! That’s what I felt when I watched NOVA’s special on the Tiananmen Square incident and, at pledge break, saw Charles Beck make a pitch for contributions.
From what I have learned, it was Charles Beck’s thin-skinned political mindset that prompted him to muzzle Maine humorist Robert Skoglund and ruin a 28 year run of “The humble Farmer” show on MPBN. Some facts came out in a recent Christian Science Monitor. It seems Mister Skoglund had had the nerve to read on the air an entry from an encyclopedia on the subject, “fascism,” with emphasis on the rise of Mussolini in the 1920’s. There were eerie parallels to the present American political scene which Mr. Beck found insulting to himself and other ....
I am enclosing a copy of my letter to the Bangor Daily News, published today: I wrote MPBN and suggested they put a disclaimer in front of Mr. Skoglund’s show as is done before the 1 PM community forum shows. MPBN never replied.
Perhaps Mr. Beck was too self-righteous to see the enormity of his appearing in the middle of a program in which a desperate, paranoid and repressive Chinese government attempts to strip away the human rights of its citizens to protest and to express themselves, rights that real Americans should cherish. On the other hand perhaps he was fully aware of that irony and relished every moment of it, thinking that nobody in the audience would see his hypocrisy. If so, he was wrong and I am sure I’m not the only one who saw it.
Later in the week another pledge break interrupted a lovely two hour American ballroom dance competition. The woman who was cheerleading the fund drive, promoting a news program on MPBN, commented, “There’s more than one side to every story and you deserve to hear them all.” Maybe it’s a good thing Mr. Beck, the Torquemada of Public Radio, wasn’t on TV that evening: he might have choked on such a hypocritical platitude. Shame! Shame on MPBN in general and Mr. Charles Beck in particular!
J in Addison
J in Addison
National Public Radio
Dear sirs:
Shock and awe! That’s what I felt when I watched NOVA’s special on the Tiananmen Square incident and, at pledge break, saw Charles Beck make a pitch for contributions.
From what I have learned, it was Charles Beck’s thin-skinned political mindset that prompted him to muzzle Maine humorist Robert Skoglund and ruin a 28 year run of “The humble Farmer” show on MPBN. Some facts came out in a recent Christian Science Monitor. It seems Mister Skoglund had had the nerve to read on the air an entry from an encyclopedia on the subject, “fascism,” with emphasis on the rise of Mussolini in the 1920’s. There were eerie parallels to the present American political scene which Mr. Beck found insulting to himself and other ....
I am enclosing a copy of my letter to the Bangor Daily News, published today: I wrote MPBN and suggested they put a disclaimer in front of Mr. Skoglund’s show as is done before the 1 PM community forum shows. MPBN never replied.
Perhaps Mr. Beck was too self-righteous to see the enormity of his appearing in the middle of a program in which a desperate, paranoid and repressive Chinese government attempts to strip away the human rights of its citizens to protest and to express themselves, rights that real Americans should cherish. On the other hand perhaps he was fully aware of that irony and relished every moment of it, thinking that nobody in the audience would see his hypocrisy. If so, he was wrong and I am sure I’m not the only one who saw it.
Later in the week another pledge break interrupted a lovely two hour American ballroom dance competition. The woman who was cheerleading the fund drive, promoting a news program on MPBN, commented, “There’s more than one side to every story and you deserve to hear them all.” Maybe it’s a good thing Mr. Beck, the Torquemada of Public Radio, wasn’t on TV that evening: he might have choked on such a hypocritical platitude. Shame! Shame on MPBN in general and Mr. Charles Beck in particular!
J in Addison
posted by The humble Farmer at 8:14 PM
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