Beato on Talk of the Nation

Yesterday, NPR's Talk of the Nation interviewed Contributing Editor Greg Beato about his hilarious-yet-substantive paean to infotainment, "Amusing Ourselves to Depth."  Listen to Beato yap about his column here.

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Beato quotes some very funny headlines from the Onion. I find that most of the time, the headline is the joke. There’s no reason to have the story except to create the illusion that The Onion is a real newspaper.

Sometimes that can create a joke of it-s own. I remember Gary Byrd, host of the Global Black Experience on WBAI 99.5 FM i New York City launching an on-air rant over an Onion story that claimed NBA playoffs were scheduled to draw the attention of African Americans from some serious political event that was going on at the same time. Years after he should have known better, Byrd was mistaking The Onion for a conventional weekly.