NPRrrrrgghh! Or, Talk Like Scott Simon Day

This morning on NPR:

STEVE INSKEEP: Joining us now are Don Gonyea, White House correspondent for NPR, and Scott Horsley, who covered the Kerry campaign. We'd like to ask them to wrap up this election season by offering some superfluous confirmation of the fatuous insights regarding the candidates that they've treated us to for the last six months. Don, let's start with you.

DON GONYEA: Thanks, Steve. I'll happily talk about Bush The Likeable Guy and refrain from discussing anything resembling the reality that our President is still a functional illiterate with an intemperate mean streak and by most accounts is probably a dry drunk.

INSKEEP: Scott, is it true that Kerry was just Too Goddamned Stiff? What's up with that?

SCOTT HORSLEY: Absolutely, Steve. And let me just add a colorful human interest anecdote that re-affirms the 'effete and austere' stereotype: There's this guy from USA Today who compared Kerry's reaction to microphones to a vampire's reaction to a cross. And I hope that you're appreciating my subtle reiteration through the use of this story the meme that Kerry was insufficiently or insincerely religious.

It's Fall Fund Drive this week, and as usual it has me cursing the fact that I can tune in WXYC for only as far as the halfway point of my commute. But I couldn't help but notice the premiums that our local NPR station is offering for a Cheapskate Level pledge of $75: A BBC coffee mug and a year's subscription to Newsweek.

Doesn't that just say it all?

Leaving alone the coffee mug that could only serve as a daily reminder of the fact that Americans have to tune into the BBC to get any decent reportage of the Iraq war, don't they think that most NPR listeners listen mainly to avoid just the sort of facile regurgitation of conventional wisdom practiced by the likes of Newsweek? Or am I just a bitter communist or something?