A mere shadow of her former self, Diane Rehm once had a spine, heart and courage. She questioned and challenged guests, and even served as one of the key skeptics in the runup to the Iraq war (based upon lies). Now she is the worst radio show host in America. I remember painting the outside of my house during the runup to the Iraq war and during the early days of the war itself. And each day I painted, I listened to Diane each day.
But in recent years, she has let vocal GOP ideologues bully and talk over other guests while making false statements, bashing ordinary Americans, conspiring to harm them, and otherwise doing the bidding of the 1%. So too, she sloughed off the role of a skeptical host yesterday in a show addressing hunger in America. Diane acted non-skeptically, asked almost nothing, and challenged nothing. If she asked a question it was completely idiotic, such as, “Where does the food (for food banks) come from?” Americans were thus uninformed and even dis-informed because she lets guests get away with complete fabrications and alternate-universe notions of what is actually happening in our country. Why is she still taking up the airwaves? Why not just skip the intermediary and let the ever-polemic Steven Moore have his own show?
Yesterday, she pretended to offer a serious discussion on hunger in America. Instead, what she offered was some sort of cruel joke. I have never been on food stamps and I have never been obese, but I was offended by the outrageous crap coming from her show and under its banner. It was worse than offensive.
She sat idly as Steven Moore, once a Club for Growth hack and now a member of the WSJ editorial board, belittled poor people. The bastard does this right before the holidays with true (Charles) Dickensian flourish. But the modern-day Scrooge had no Tiny Tim-inspired better day. Talk about the “worst of times.” He claimed those on food stamps did not need food, but rather they had too much of it. Make the man do a Food Stamp Challenge now!
The proof, he suggested, was in obesity in America. He implied the poor and working poor were all obese. He suggested America should scrap food stamps. And he proceeded to lie about the same old welfare-to-work and food stamps lies the GOP tried to get away with before the election.
God, it gets old. And there is Diane out-Charley-Rose-ing Charlie Rose. It’s pitiful. The airwaves are a public resource. It’s time NPR take back the two precious hours the Diane Rehm Show takes up. I am not alone in questioning Rehm’s handling of this show. She needs to retire-and soon. In the meantime, the Diane Rehm Show is a load of bull and it is the public getting reamed by its content.
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