NPR's "Car Talk" Glides To a Halt 148
stevegee58 writes "After 25 years on the air, Tom and Ray Magliozzi (aka Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers) are calling it quits in September. With their nerdy humor, explosive laughter and geek cred (both MIT alums) Tom and Ray will be sorely missed by the average NPR-listening Slashdotter." How many garages have names as cool as "Hacker's Haven"? I've long thought that someone should assemble a compilation featuring nothing but hours of their laughter. (Which will be available for sampling, since they will continue to play archived material for a long time yet.)
Re:Sad day (Score:5, Interesting)
All the anti-NPR vitriol this story incites (Score:5, Interesting)
The mouth-breathers see "NPR" and have flooded every forum on the internet with their ass-hate "libtard yuck-yuck" comments. It's a great show, more for entertainment value than anything. Oh yeah, and NPR listeners are bar none the most well-informed news consumers in this country.
My local station plays the show at 7 or 8 Wednesday nights which is when I usually catch it.
Re:About bloody time (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess you can tag the parent Flamebait, but I think it serves a valid purpose. Not everyone loves the show. Some people are sickened by the thousands of hours of perfectly good broadcast time that are wasted on the hyenas in question each week.
To quote Harry Shearer, whose Le Show followed Car Talk at the time, "Memo to the Car Talk guys: Stop Laughing."
Re:Hacker's Haven??? (Score:2, Interesting)
Watch the youtube videos of a mother being held in glass jails (her crime: carrying milk for her baby), or thrown to the ground by TSA, or other disgusting events, and you'll see how bad things truly are.
Re:About bloody time (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd disagree about Le Show, but that's beside the point.
I understand that people like CT, but my local NPR (opb.org) pays to play them twice a weekend. I know from listening to other NPR affiliates across the country over the 'net that there are some seriously good programs available for broadcast - programs that I suspect would even cost *less*.
My NPR affiliates love to brag on the diversity and alternative voices that they provide to the community, but on weekends they spam me with nothing but Wait Wait, Praire HC, Car Talk and Michael Whoever's show. Few of those are terrible on their own merits, but the opportunity cost is disgraceful.
Things have gotten marginally better over the years, but the weekend is a wasteland of chuckleheads. Every time the local NPR station brags on diversity I roll my eyes and think that I've always been able to listen to re-runs of CT twice a weekend but they've never broadcast a single episode of Tavis Smiley.
I get their point - they're more serious than the fart-sound morning shows and more diverse than the honkey-trash christian country on other stations, but that should by no means be the hurdle by which they judge themselves.
I'd seriously like to see a report on what is being paid for programming and what programming was turned down when the pledge drive comes around. I've always suspected that two lesser-known informative shows are passed by in order to chum the weekends with hyena talk.
Re:All the anti-NPR vitriol this story incites (Score:5, Interesting)
I've caught snippets of Car Talk on the occasional Saturday morning where I'm out driving early, and it's always been entertaining. I'm no expert in cars, but I've replaced my own brake pads, changed my own oil, and recently even worked through a do-it-yourself oxygen sensor replacement. The show is both entertaining and informative; the hosts are witty and the subject matter is at the right level for someone who realizes that you don't have to get screwed over by a repair shop for a burnt-out headlamp.
On a recent road trip, I found myself in a weird no-man's land somewhere in North Carolina where I could only pick up talk radio and country music. I ended up actually listening to Rush Limbaugh for a short stretch. I was absolutely amazed at the complete lack of substance in his show. It was nothing but taking a random fact and then spewing heavily slanted personal opinion about it.
For those who choose to listen to that kind of crap over something like Diane Rhem or All Things Considered or Kojo Nnamdi, all I can do is just beg: Give it one hour. Any of those three shows. You will get twenty times the information and one twentieth the spoon-fed opinion from it than you will get from Rush.
Listening to conservative talk radio is for those who can't be bothered to learn the truth or think for themselves. If you won't listen to NPR because you think it's "liberal" then you are doing yourself and your species a huge disservice, and you are worth nothing but contempt.