NPR

As a dedicated NPR listener (I can't really manage to get any other channel on my shower radio), I appreciate that the station balances hard and sometimes depressing news coverage with lighter pieces on pop culture. But the more vocal listeners of public radio hate it, leaving some to wonder if they're just a bunch of complaining snobs.

In a piece for Slate, noninsufferable NPR listener Farhad Manjoo goes through NPR's archive for letters to the editor proving that people writing them are "the stodgiest, whiniest, most self-importantly insufferable snobs of all time." Some of the best complaints:

• On a story about children using iPads: "Hopefully, this will be followed up by an uplifting story about the great things that are happening to children in the realm of outdoor play and unhooking from screen time."
• On a story about Mel Gibson: "Mel Gibson's voice in a phone conversation is entirely outside what NPR has always been about. Shame on the producers of ATC for allowing such a scrape at the very bottom of the barrel."
• On Levi Johnston: "This is not news or newsworthy. Please do not air this type of article again. We do not care about this subject. It is not our business or concern, and we do not want to know."
• On coverage about Gov. Mark Sanford's extramarital affair: "And I am very disappointed that NPR has spent airtime reporting the story. Can't NPR reporters find more important events going on in the world?"

What got Farhad most upset was the negative reaction to NPR's mere mention of Michael Jackson's death, the biggest pop culture event of 2009. One disgruntled listener wrote in: "What about 'Uyghur unrest in China, fighting in Mogadishu and dozens of deaths in Afghanistan?'" Don't worry! I'm sure NPR followed up its MJ story with death and unrest right after the commercial break. Oh wait, there are no commercials on NPR. Appreciate what you have, people! I have a feeling the silent majority does.

Source: Flickr User gesika22

If teens have sex in real life, why can't they on television? The question has already been asked, and the answer is usually "because ad revenues say so." But today Robert Thompson, a professor of culture at Syracuse University, pinned TV and film up against books by asking how is Skins different than explicit sex and adult plot lines in literature.

Well, we could end the argument by saying more kids watch TV than read books, and visuals are more seductive than 11-point New Baskerville font, but we won't. Let's ignore that intrusive point on the grounds that kids have access to pretty much every book ever written. Thompson cites the perennial high school freshman read Romeo and Juliet as a tale with a message unfit for 14-year-olds: two kids kill themselves because they can't be together.

Then he moves to the sexually graphic, masturbation fest of a book Portnoy's Complaint, which probably wasn't on your high school reading list. He read it early (and, just a guess, but probably often) and told NPR today it was transformative for him. Read what he said below.

Dear Diary...lots of girls keep their thoughts under lock and key. It's said that many girls grow up believing they can do anything and then become tweens and lose that confidence. The Hidden World of Girls Project gives parents some insight into the minds of their daughters. NPR's initiative asks women to take a picture of a diary page of their youth and upload it to Flickr in an effort to "form a comprehensive tapestry — from elation to depression — of life experiences." The entries thus far include crayon doodles and poetry, an elaborate boy rating system, and records of every day life. Add yours! Or share your best tween kept secrets with your daughter.

I love this story! The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is currently exhibiting Robert Frank's photographs from his landmark 1959 work The Americans, widely viewed as the photographic analogue to Jack Kerouac's beat classic On the Road. Frank and Kerouac both had similar sensibilities, wanting to show the sprawling, diverse, and melancholy side of postwar America. Kerouac, in fact, wrote the introduction to The Americans. Regarding the above photograph, "Elevator — Miami Beach, 1955," Kerouac asks, "That little ole lonely elevator girl looking up sighing in an elevator full of blurred demons, what's her name & address?"

Turns out, "lonely elevator girl" turned 50-something Sharon Collins saw an exhibit of "The Americans" a few years ago and recognized herself as the 15-year-old in the photograph: "When San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art first opened, I think it was more than 10 years ago . . . I stood in front of this particular photograph for probably a full five minutes, not knowing why I was staring at it, and then it really dawned on me that the girl in the picture was me." To hear what Collins has to say about the photograph, read more

I've had a love/hate relationship with Ayelet Waldman for some time, but the more I read her work and listen to her speak, the more I realize that my ambivalence is with the subjects she discusses more than it is with her: motherhood, work, feminism, and the idea of "having it all."

Waldman, whose husband is writer Michael Chabon, caused a bit of controversy a few years ago when she declared (in a rhetorically bold and questionable move) that she loved her husband more than her children. She said she wanted to contrast herself from the women in her circle she noticed were no longer sexually involved with their husbands because they'd subsumed their identities to being mothers. Although she loved her children, she wanted to make a point she wouldn't sacrifice her identity and sexuality on their behalf. (Needless to say, if I were her kid, I'd have been pretty hurt by that statement!)

To find out more about Waldman and her relationship to feminism, read more