Mikaela says:
Missed this in April.
The Onion points out that This American Life has gotten progressively (or unprogressively, as it were) less diverse in its presentation of everyday Americans, focusing lately on white, upper-middle class, liberal stories.
This American Life Completes Documentation Of Liberal, Upper-Middle-Class Existence
This American Life announced Monday that they have completed their comprehensive 12-year survey of life as a modern upper-middle-class American...[i]n what cultural anthropologists are calling a "colossal achievement" in the study of white-collar professionals....
The completed work is expected to be an indispensable source of information for years to come about the thoughts and tastes of bespectacled cynics prone to neuroses who are actually doing just fine.
What kills me about this is I heard it from an interview w/ Ira Glass on The Sound of Young America. He says it's true, and it's bad. I appreciated that he didn't equivocate, didn't try to explain it away, didn't make promises he couldn't keep. Just said, it didn't start that way, and they've lost their way a bit.
I hope this goads them into action, because one of the best things I love about their show is that they have historically taken on subjects that don't get attention anywhere else. Their story about Harold Washington, for example, is amazingly good, with personal interviews of folks who were his friends and watched how racism undermined the City's ability to get things done, and how Harold's finesse won Councilors over, as well as interviews with folks who didn't vote for him because he was black and who later did because he was a good mayor.
Or the story about why supermarkets in two Chicago neighborhoods sell milk at different prices -- higher in a black neighborhood, with fewer product choices, and lower in a white neighborhood with obscene diversity of crap to buy. (Can't find the link right now, but I've written about it on m-pyre before...)
They've had stories talking in depth to a latina gang-banger about why she was happy being in a gang -- and then followed up with her later after she chose to get herself out and take a different path.
They did two stories on a young Afghan-American who decides to return to his fatherland -- literally (his father is governor of some province) -- to help with the rebuilding and again when he decides to come home -- realizing that he's irrevocably an American after all, and coming to terms with that vertiginous new perspective.
Perhaps because I've listened to all twelve years of programs in the last year (!!!) -- backwards -- I don't have the same critique as the Onion leveled with typical irascible wit. If I had listened the opposite way, maybe I would. Which is all to say, TAL has not lost me yet, and I'm preeminently winnable. :)
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