Tag: NPR

Taylor Responds to Pompeo on Ukraine

Buck Banks

“To support Ukraine is to support a rules-based international order that avoided war among major powers in Europe for seven decades. It is to support democracy over autocracy. It is to support freedom over unfreedom. Most Americans do.”

— Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor responds in the New York Times to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s sarcastic question in private to an NPR reporter: “Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?”

CNN’s Gogi an American Success Story

Buck Banks

“To become chief business editor at NPR is a huge honor. In a way, it embodies the achievement of the American dream for me. I grew up in a very small town on a mountain top in a remote corner of India, where I couldn’t even have imagined this,” she wrote. “Nowhere else in the world can a person emigrate from another country and be measured not on their color, religion or creed, but on the merits of their accomplishments, perseverance and experiences of what one brings to the table. At the risk of sounding corny, I’ll say it: It is what makes America great.”

— Pallavi Gogi, a senior editor at CNNMoney, who is leaving her post to become the top business editor at NPR, reports Reliable Sources.

Verbatim

Trish

Let me get this straight: the big “controversy” uncovered by James O’Keefe (the hidden camera doofus) is that someone called the tea party a bunch of racists? Who could imagine that anyone could reach that conclusion just by seeing a bunch of middle aged white men holding up signs comparing President Obama to a monkey. What’s next, will he uncover the shocking revelation that the NAACP is run by a bunch of black people? Or perhaps he can blind-side us all by discovering that the morons from Westboro Baptist Church hate gays. What incredible investigative journalism!

— William Smith, a Baltimore Sun reader, in a letter to the editor

Verbatim

Trish

I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on a plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they’re identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

— Former NPR and continuing FOX News commentator Juan Williams, explaining to Bill O’Reilly that he’s not racist, just nervous (in the words of comic Marc Maron). Williams was fired from NPR following his appearance on FOX’s The O’Reilly Factor.