An Open Letter to the CEO of NPR, Katherine Maher
Dear Ms. Maher,You don’t know me, and there is no reason why you should. I am mostly a nobody. If people know me at all, they know me as a former Oscar blogger whose public support for Trump destroyed my so-called “career.”But really, I am not all that different from you. Or at least, I didn’t use to be. I come from your world, more or less. Not that I was ever a tech-savvy, globtrotting millennial in charge of National Public Radio, but it would not have been unusual for me to take a picture of myself in a mask in November of 2020, wearing a Joe Biden hat.In November of 2020, however, I was already afraid of the Democrats retaking power. Things had gotten weird on the Left, Ms. Maher. Really, really weird and no one would talk about it, least of all NPR or PBS. Then again, they couldn’t talk about it because they would be destroyed if they did. Everyone knew that, and everyone just went along with it, especially you.I am a creature of the Internet and a former lifelong Liberal who left the party and the movement in 2020 after things had derailed so badly that I could no longer stand to be associated with them. It was the dehumanization of half the country. It was the corruption within the Democratic Party. It was the dangerous future in store for the nation’s young people.It took me a while to finally get kicked out of Woketopia for good, banished to the virtual gulag. I made a joke about “White Dudes for Harris,” suggesting finally “white power” was back in style. But one thing about the Woketopians, they have no sense of humor. None. It’s been stripped away and replaced with yet more of the suffocating, repellent monoculture that’s been shoved down our throats for these long ten years.They all thought I was serious, that I really meant it, that “white power” was back. Thousands saw the tweet. A close friend of mine would text me to see if I really meant it. I wanted to joke that no self-respecting “white supremacist” would be caught dead praising “White Dudes for Harris,” but I was already in too deep.That caught the attention of a reporter named Rebecca Keegan, who was a devoted NPR listener and a true believer in the causes of the Left. She called me a “MAGA darling” in the Hollywood Reporter. A major studio pulled their ads that day, and everything I built over the last 25 years as a “woman-owned” business went up in flames almost overnight.It’s quite a story, Ms. Maher, but it’s one people like you wouldn’t even want to talk about. To you, it isn’t “cancel culture,” it’s “consequence culture.” Well, you might call the defunding of NPR and PBS the same thing, it’s “consequence culture” as a populist movement decides to finally fight back.How it started…You were just ten years old when I got online, Ms. Maher. The year was 1994. Bill Clinton was still the president. Much like it did last year, my life had fallen apart, and I needed a reset. I found the perfect escape on the Wild, Wild Web, where I would live out the rest of the next 30 years of my life. I had a baby in 1998 and, as a single mother, built a website devoted to the Oscars in 1999.I also helped birth an entire industry, and before long, even The New York Times would have an Oscar blogger. I appeared on NPR a few times as an Oscars expert. I would attend film festivals all over the world and hobnob with the rich and famous at fancy parties.I would be invited to cover the Oscars, attending as a guest for almost ten years. I would make money from movie studios that thought my voice was influential enough to advertise on my site. I could buy a new car. I could support my daughter. I could pay my rent.I would use my website to advocate for a more diverse and inclusive Oscars by promoting women and people of color for the awards. I did this even before Barack Obama won in 2008, which coincided with the rise of Twitter, Facebook, and the iPhone. I wouldn’t realize it until much later, but all of that coming together at once would allow us to build a necessary “inside” where we could eventually banish the undesirables to the “outside.”We all caught the wave at the same time. We had come out of the 90s era of therapy and psych meds, and now, we were ready to build our Shining Woketopia on the Hill. As society migrated online, it was all under our control. We would ultimately build an empire that represented nearly all of the power in America - cultural, political, educational, and institutional. But only a select few would be invited in.My daughter attended all of the progressive public schools in Los Angeles. We listened to NPR on the way to and from school. I was a PTA mom, a progressive, active Liberal who cared about the climate and racial inequality. I barely noticed around 2014 when my daughter began feeling depressed from what she was learning in school.As a white student, whose best friend was Black and whose president was Black, she was now being told to stand outside the circle and de-center herself from the students of color. She was taught that she was part of the oppressor class and was among the “colonizers.” This disease was inside of her; it was her “whiteness.”I didn’t realize then just how deeply indoctrinated our public schools and universities had become. When she graduated from high school, only one of her friends wanted to transition to become a boy. Her mother, a Conservative, refused to give her puberty blockers and amputate her breasts, though she would finish the job when she turned 18 and is now living as a boy.By the time my daughter graduated from college, two of her roommates were on cross-sex hormones, changing their sex as a couple. A boy she had a crush on had now fully transitioned and is living life as a transgender woman. And no one in the media, not at NPR or PBS, ever warned them. They were indoctrinated now, too. COVID paranoia and lockdowns only served to heighten the growing anxiety and fear about saying or doing the wrong thing. Wokeness arrived first as a low-frequency hum, a reaction to the election of the first Black president. As Republicans began to obstruct his agenda, we called them “racists.” The Tea Party was racist; it had to be. The Freedom Caucus was racist; it had to be. Our president was perfect, and the only reason anyone would object to anything had to be racism.The “social justice warriors” who came of age online on sites like Tumblr ballooned into a massive army of zealots. None of us saw this coming, and by the time we did, it was too late. The protests at Evergreen College were the first indication that something had gone very wrong. Holding a professor hostage because he went against the doctrine? It should not surprise you, Ms. Maher, that NPR and PBS did not cover that either, although it would have made a compelling episode of Frontline. Had they come even remotely close to telling the truth throughout this era, maybe things would be different now.That left it up to independent voices to cover the growing scandal at Evergreen, the transgender contagion, and the obsession with race. That is how evolution left NPR and PBS in the dust. Those looking for truth and common sense had to escape the bubble. I’m guessing you never did, Ms. Maher.The army that took to the streets in 2020 was not peacefully protesting; they were demanding diners raise their fists in support of Black Lives Matter. They were demanding everyone put a Black square on Instagram, or else. My niece threatened to cut off all ties if I didn’t. I told her she was in a cult.When I saw the video of Sue’s 100-year-old mattress store in Kenosha burning as the city was consumed by a false narrative perpetuated by the media, that Jacob Blake was unarmed and there to break up a fight, I tried to post about it on Facebook. I was shouted down and told I cared more about property than I did about people. You agree with that, don’t you, Ms. Maher? When Tom Cotton published an op-ed in the New York Times reflecting what the majority of Americans believed, that if the protests could not be controlled, we must “send in the troops.” Then I watched everyone online lose their minds over the truth - once again, the truth, always the TRUTH.By the end of it, James Bennett and Bari Weiss would be out at the New York Times. They would not be the only ones at the Times or other news outlets. Writers and editors would lose their jobs for posting headlines like “Building Matter Too.” Or because some overly fragile staffer felt unsafe and called them out for something, like racism. Hundreds and hundreds of “cancel culture” purges taught everyone the same lesson: say nothing, or you’re next. A glance at your tweets around that time, Ms. Maher, suggests that you were fully on board with all of it, too - a true believer in the cause, probably like everyone else who runs a public radio station across America. So when you say they’re “collateral damage,” know this: in a monoculture, everything is the same. If it isn’t, you lose your job. That you did not listen to Uri Berliner’s brave testimony in the Free Press, but rather demonized him for speaking out, should have been enough to force your resignation by the Board of Directors, but I’m guessing they’re all on the same page as you. Your resignation letter might look something like this, posted by Representative Brandon Gill:You remember him, right? He grilled you pretty hard, and you maintained a poker face throughout, gaslighting all of us. It’s not “fascism” that canceled Stephen Colbert and defunded public broadcasting. It’s democracy. Your side was voted out by the guy you spent ten years trying to destroy. That alone should send the message that whatever you were doing backfired. Maybe you’ll learn the lesson. Probably not. I can promise you those community radio stations in Trump states don’t have any Trump supporters listening to them. And though I do notice some subtle changes in the coverage at NPR after a few casual searches, I’m afraid it’s too little, too late. Those local stations are likely to be as woke and indoctrinated as NPR and PBS have become. They have to be because everything has to be in a monoculture like ours. There is no other option but for all of us to leave it behind. We don’t want this indoctrination anymore - not in our schools, not in Hollywood, not in science, not in culture, and not in our news. Our American story has always been that we shook off the class system that decided our station in life at birth, that anyone could rise regardless of their status, where they were born, their skin color, or their gender. Obviously, we haven’t always lived up to that ideal, but it is still our story.The Woketopians tell a different story. And it’s one you believe in, Ms. Maher. Or at least you pretend to because as long as you pay obeisance to the cult, the activists will leave you alone. As I strolled through the Farmer’s Market in my very white, very liberal town this morning, I was awash in hedonistic pleasure. The smell of fresh strawberries, bountiful basil, organic olive oil, a whiff of lavender carried by the wind, freshly ground coffee, and someone playing music in the distance. You would fit right in here, Ms. Maher, in a sunhat with a smile on your face, because this is where you belong, inside utopia. But I also know none of these smiling faces I pass know me. For all of their hybrid cars, the lawn signs, the pleas for “kindness,” the careful, gentle language so as not to offend all come with an implicit threat: obey our rules or we will destroy you. Milan Kundera explains what happened to the Left, as we built our Woketopian empire, in the Book of Laughter and Forgetting:To quote one of the greatest films ever made, one Hollywood will never come close to making again, No Country for Old Men. You can’t stop what’s coming. You can’t stop what’s coming. It ain’t all waiting on you. That’s vanity. Nothing will ever be the same when this is all over. The good news is that the empire’s collapse will usher in a renaissance —a big bang of brand-new culture that is alive, fearless, and rooted in truth, not dogma. The best thing you can do is what I did: escape the bubble now and realize those who don’t agree with you aren’t your enemy. They are your fellow Americans. // This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.sashastone.com/subscribe
USA