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The Awful Truth about ‘NPR Voice’
American Thinker ^ | 9 Jan, 2026 | Brian Cabana

Posted on 01/09/2026 4:41:57 AM PST by MtnClimber

Why does the famed leftist radio bastion have all its broadcasters speak in that insufferable whisper? Here is the somewhat disturbing answer.

It is a common occurrence for a regular person to be flipping through radio channels, eventually to come across the style of radio presentation known as “NPR voice” — a soft-spoken, breathy, quietly pompous mode of vocal performance suggestive of an intimate conversation among a small circle of elites. The question immediately arises: Who could possibly find this manner of presentation appealing, and why?

The answer lies in understanding NPR as the distilled essence of sociological, ideological, and dispositional liberalism. NPR voice is part of the complex of behaviors exhibited by liberalism at its point of cultural and intellectual heat-death. Understanding its appeal thus requires an examination of this cultural disposition.

Liberalism is one strain of a complex of Enlightenment ideologies that arose out of the sociological tumult of early modernity, as the prevailing aristocratic and clerical authorities of the Late Medieval Period faced the twin onslaughts of the scientific and commercial revolutions. These revolutions heralded the ascendancy of new technical, financial, and industrial power centers that upended the social order and reformed it in their own image. These novel modes of social organization accordingly shifted the prevailing power structures, as the relations between master and slave, journeyman and apprentice, king and vassal, lord and serf had given way to an entirely different configuration of power relations between employer and employee, mayor and town councilman, representative and lobbyist.

Ultimately, the ideologies of the Enlightenment are best understood as projects to justify, formalize, and crystallize the novel power relations of the modern era so as to transfigure these ascendant power dynamics into properly grounded arrangements of social authority — to incorporate these arrangements into state structures geared toward universally

(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...


TOPICS: Society
KEYWORDS: defundnpr; defundpbs; leftism; npr; pbs
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To: MtnClimber

My wife worked as a radio news person for 25 years.

She hated the NPR voice.

In her world she had to do a newscast at the top and bottom of the hour and she had to write new stories before and after. She sounded “urgent” because they simply did not stop moving from 4 AM to 10 AM.

On NPR they want to sound like they have all the time in the world. That’s because they do. They did not have to cover more than one story at a time…and they could take a day to write it. And they were pompous as hell. No one liked them.

It also has to do with their microphones.


21 posted on 01/09/2026 5:20:02 AM PST by Vermont Lt
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To: healy61

“You can’t fool me, I listen to public radio!”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4QXaCTtFN4


22 posted on 01/09/2026 5:25:16 AM PST by dfwgator ("I am Charlie Kirk!")
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To: 6ppc
ROTFLMAO! Intellectual Heat Death! The author did a perfect job of writing a commentary using the style and language of NPR! This is hilarious!

I caught that too! I was just about to post something about how this article SOUNDS like like an NPR broadcast when it hit me.
23 posted on 01/09/2026 5:25:37 AM PST by mmichaels1970 ( )
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To: MtnClimber

I stopped listening to their drivel when I realized they were a front for commie propaganda.


24 posted on 01/09/2026 5:31:22 AM PST by LouAvul (The Old Testament is historical, but we are to only follow the New Testament. )
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To: 6ppc

That is what I was thinking. It reads rather NPRish.


25 posted on 01/09/2026 5:33:14 AM PST by dforest
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To: 6ppc; MtnClimber
the modern liberal’s conception of good governance would be in principle devoid of electoral input; government would be operated by classes of credentialed experts exercising rationally grounded — hence, justified — authority, with politicians serving as husks and figureheads. Given these proclivities, it should be unsurprising that this faction found its ideal political executives in the persons of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

BAM - Mic Drop!

A certified geriatric victim of dementia and a woman that can't express a cogent thought holding supreme executive power is the Left's idea of 'rational leadership'.

If that doesn't ROTFLMAO nothing will.

26 posted on 01/09/2026 5:35:55 AM PST by Pontiac (The welfare state must fail because it is contrary to human nature and diminishes the human spirit.)
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To: Romulus
Sorry, but the “Enlightenment” was always anti-clerical.

True, but for this writer's purposes that would have been more distracting than his academic-speak prose.

Given the clerical and noble classes were tied at the hip with the principle of 'divine right', the writer's premise still works.
27 posted on 01/09/2026 5:39:14 AM PST by greenbrier
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To: MtnClimber
This was written in jargon as a put on, right?


28 posted on 01/09/2026 5:40:51 AM PST by nathanbedford (Attack, repeat, attack! - Bull Halsey)
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To: MtnClimber

Hannibal Lector was soft-spoken as well.


29 posted on 01/09/2026 5:41:58 AM PST by GingisK
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To: nathanbedford

I think it was written in the way that NPR stories are written.


30 posted on 01/09/2026 5:43:34 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Romulus

Did you read the article?


31 posted on 01/09/2026 5:44:18 AM PST by ConservativeDude
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To: MtnClimber

I used a short transcript of NPR to illustrate propaganda to Junior Achievement kids. About every tenth word is loaded with bias


32 posted on 01/09/2026 5:45:44 AM PST by anton
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To: MtnClimber
Yes, that's what I thought, well done.


33 posted on 01/09/2026 5:50:40 AM PST by nathanbedford (Attack, repeat, attack! - Bull Halsey)
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To: CodeToad

Well known fact that MRIs of gays shows abnormalities in the speech region of the brain.


34 posted on 01/09/2026 5:51:50 AM PST by central_va (I won't be reconstructed and I do not give a damn... )
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To: central_va

It’s that practiced lisp.


35 posted on 01/09/2026 5:52:52 AM PST by CodeToad
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Save for Janet, Fred & Marilyn Bump!

Family lib whack jobs.

😎


36 posted on 01/09/2026 5:54:14 AM PST by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
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To: MayflowerMadam

Beat me to it and yes, it was.


37 posted on 01/09/2026 5:55:50 AM PST by TangoLimaSierra (⭐⭐To the Left, the Truth is Right Wing Violence⭐⭐)
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To: MtnClimber

I dunno, it seems a bit too analytical. I don’t find any special meaning in it. If all I have is the text, I wouldn’t read anything so deeply into it because it wouldn’t even be there. I would rather take what they say at face value and I’d already have an idea of where they’d be coming from.


38 posted on 01/09/2026 5:56:28 AM PST by equaviator (Nobody's perfect. That's why they put pencils on erasers!)
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To: AppyPappy

That book!


39 posted on 01/09/2026 5:58:56 AM PST by one guy in new jersey
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To: MtnClimber; FRiends

Looks like they’re all going to be scrambling for funds in the very near future. These commies have been sucking at the Taxpayer Teat for FIFTY YEARS!

Thank you, Mr. President! MAGA!

Corporation for Public Broadcasting votes to officially shut down

“Leaders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting voted on Monday to dissolve the organization that has been around for over 50 years.

The CPB is a private agency that has distributed funding to NPR, PBS, and hundreds of local public television and radio stations across the country since it was created in 1967, per The Associated Press.

Since Congress acted to defund CPB’s operations last summer, the agency has been winding down. On Monday, the board of directors voted to shut it down completely instead of keeping it running as a shell.

‘CPB’s final act would be to protect the integrity of the public media system and the democratic values by dissolving, rather than allowing the organization to remain defunded and vulnerable to additional attacks,’ said Patricia Harrison, the organization’s president and CEO, in a statement.

*SNIP*

“Trump and his right-wing allies have criticized PBS and NPR for years. Earlier this year, the president sent a memo to Congress, telling them to cut the CPB’s funding.

In July, Trump wrote on Truth Social, ‘Any Republican that votes to allow this monstrosity to continue broadcasting will not have my support or Endorsement.’”

https://www.deseret.com/u-s-world/2026/01/05/cpb-is-shutting-down/

P.S. Their budget to promote communism in 2025 alone was FIVE HUNDRED THIRTY FIVE MILLION in Taxpayer Dollars!


40 posted on 01/09/2026 6:07:25 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin (I don't have, 'Hobbies.' I'm developing a robust Post-Apocalyptic skill set.)
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