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When Santaland Diaries was first aired 12 years ago, it was more than a little daring because of its description of a flirtation with Snowball, another male elf. It became one of the most requested tapes from NPR. ... Snowball was cut from this morning's rebroadcast: "The overall cutest elf is a fellow from Queens named Snowball. Snowball tends to ham it up with the children, sometime literally tumbling down the path to Santa's house. I tend to frown on that sort of behavior but Snowball is hands down adorable -- you want to put him in your pocket. Yesterday we worked together as Santa Elves and I became excited when he started saying things like, "I'd follow you to Santa's house any day, Crumpet!" It made me dizzy, this flirtation. By mid-afternoon I was running into walls. At the end of our shift we were in the bathroom, changing clothes, when suddenly we were surrounded by three Santas and five other elves -- all of them were guys that Snowball was flirting with. Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game." ... The other major cut from the original 1992 broadcast raises additional glaring questions regarding potential censorship by NPR. The deleted segment addresses animal testing by Proctor & Gamble. [...] Proctor & Gamble is a major funder of NPR: ... A child came to Santa this morning and his mother said, "All right, Jason. Tell Santa what you want. Tell him what you want." Jasonsaid, "I...want...Prokton and...Gamble to... stop animal testing." The mother said, "Proctor, Jason, that's Proctor and Gamble. And what do they do to animals? Do they torture animals? Do they torture animals, Jason? Is that we they do?" Jason said, Yes, they torture. He was maybe six years old. ------- "The really dangerous American fascist," Wallace wrote, "… is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power." In his strongest indictment of the tide of fascism he saw rising in America, Wallace added, "They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." --Vice President Henry Wallace (New York Times April 9 1944) "Democracy, to crush fascism internally, must...develop the ability to keep people fully employed and at the same time balance the budget. It must put human beings first and dollars second. It must appeal to reason and decency and not to violence and deceit. We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels." --Vice President Henry Wallace _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
