-On NPR, Please Follow the Script

by Robert Jensen

Last week I found out that National Public Radio wants the opinions of antiwar activists — as long as we follow the right script.

After a day of antiwar protests on the University of Texas campus and in Austin, I found myself booked as a late-night guest on NPR’s all-day coverage of the war to be interviewed by Scott Simon, the popular host of Weekend Edition on Saturdays.

I knew something about Simon’s politics from an essay he published in the Wall Street Journal a month after 9/11. In that piece he explained that he had become a Quaker and pacifist during the antiwar movement of the 1960s but now supported Bush’s “war on terrorism.