I tuned into Roanoke’s fine NPR station while driving home from Smith Mountain Lake yesterday morning, hoping for some relaxing classical music. But instead Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me came on at the top of the hour. I enjoy the show because it is informative, letting me know just how closely I paid attention to the week’s news headlines. As you can imagine, the election dominated the show, and, as you can also imagine, the theme was Thank Goodness Barack Obama is President.
It’s what I’d expect from NPR. But I couldn’t believe my ears when, halfway through the show, Peter Segal announced as the ‘Not My Job’ guest none other than Rep. Barney Frank. Segal and the panel joked around with Frank, naturally brigning up his, uh, recent rude treatment at the hands of Bill O’Reilly. Frank’s charge was to answer a series of questions about O’Reilly based on his memoir A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity.
I’ll give Frank credit for pretty much playing straight, though the segment was an obvious attempt to embarrass O’Reilly. That said, I’m not going to rush O’Reilly’ defense because he knows exactly what he’s doing every time he goes on the air. What bothers me is the fact that Frank is one of the most corrupt members of Congress, up to his eyeballs in the corrupt government housing industry that played a huge role in the recent financial meltdown, and here the panel is laughing and joking with him. Why not just invite the CEOs of Lehman Brothers and AIG on the show and laugh and joke with them?
Again, I expect liberal bias from NPR, but this was pathetic, especially in the face of the financial meltdown that’s affected all of us. Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me’s panel of supposedly intelligent people either don’t know a whole lot about Frank or don’t mind what they do know.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to finish cleaning off my steering wheel.
