Recursivity

Religion reporting seems to attract some of the very worst elements of the journalism profession. Some, like my local paper's Mirko Petricevic, have never met a religion they didn't like; they never ask a single hard question of a believer. Others, like NPR's Barbara Bradley Haggerty, apparently view their profession as a means to convert others to their religion. (She's a member of the World Journalism Insititute, whose goal is "to recruit, equip, place and encourage journalists who are Christians in the mainstream newsrooms of America first and then the world.")

Haggerty's at it again, with a story about how academia supposedly discriminates against religious conservatives.

Unfortunately, her poster child is Mike S. Adams, a first class looney-tune who has called for "atheist-haters" to join atheist student groups at universities and hence destroy them. Poor Mike S. Adams, who was discriminated against by getting tenure at his university.

That's the best that Haggerty can do to support her claim? Pathetic.

NPR's science reporter Nell Greenfieldboyce just now (2 PM EST, March 30) referred to the Large Hadron Collider sending "beams of proteins whizzing around a 17-mile circular tunnel, then smash[ing] them together at high speed, creating a shower of debris". I sure hope that was just a slip of the tongue. Any science journalist who doesn't know immediately what the difference between a proton and protein is, and why the LHC would be smashing the former and not the latter, doesn't deserve a job.

I attended the NPR radio show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me! last night in Boston, with son #2, in the absurdly overdecorated Wang Theatre. Somebody's making some serious bucks there - 3000 people at roughly 50 bucks a head... I only hope some of it goes to WBUR, our local station. Impressions: Carl Kasell is surprisingly spry and graceful at age 75; Peter Sagal looks a little like a Jewish version of Jack Nicholson; the bell is not rung by Carl, but by a producer.

Guest was actress Ashley Judd (who was not very funny, but very, very earnest and rather pleased with herself, and gave the host a heart attack by being in the loo when it was her turn to appear); panelists were Roxanne Roberts, Charlie Pierce, and Tom Bodett. (I would have preferred to see Mo Rocca and Paula Poundstone, but at least the obnoxious and unfunny P. J. O'Rourke wasn't there.) No real side-splitters, although the funniest line of the night was after the show taping ended, when somebody asked host Peter Sagal if he ever does bar mitzvahs. He replied that he did one once, but it didn't work out very well.

If you want to hear my own appearance on Wait, Wait back in 2003, go here and click on the "Bluff the listener" link. They gave me some Wait, Wait gear in honor of the event, but I didn't get Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine.