Alright, Nina - The Message Has Been Received, LOUD AND CLEAR!!!

I admit it - I listen to NPR in the mornings. I've got a 75 minute commute each way, and find myself listening to a lot of things (talk radio is my friend. I do relish the ability to listen to Don and Mike all the way from DC out to where I live), but I tend to orbit between NPR, WTOP and the Stern show (so long at it's on - hopefully the Junkies [http://www.junkiesradio.com] are going to replace him). I've been listening to NPR since I was a kid, and I do find that it's helpful to get that other perspective on things (incidentally, I'm planning on doing a post on the failure of commercial left-wing radio). And sometimes the do get things right on, like Peter Overby's story on the Center for Regulatory Effectiveness (also the subject of a future blog post).

Anyhow, Nina Totenberg's long-carried the Supreme Court beat for NPR, and it was fairly predictable as to what NPR's (meaning Nina Totenberg's) reaction to the John Roberts Supreme Court nomination would be. What was _un_expected, however, was the redundancy of that reaction:

“He is widely viewed as perhaps the most brilliant young conservative available to this President....I’ve never heard anybody say a harsh personal word about John Roberts, but people who practice law with him who are liberal Democrats say they are under no illusions, he is a very, very, very conservative person.”— Totenberg on NPR on July 19, soon after learning of the nomination.

“Talking with people who know him and have had arguments with him, debates with him, and who love him; they tell you this is a very, very conservative man.”— Totenberg, the next day, on Good Morning America.

“Democratic lawyers who know him, who’ve litigated against him and just think he’s so smart and so honest and is very conservative....People who know him know that John Roberts is a really conservative guy....Don’t forget his wife was an officer, a high officer of a pro-life organization. He’s got adopted children. I mean, he’s a conservative Catholic....a hardline conservative.”— three days later (July 23), Totenberg on Inside Washington

So, Nina - don't mince words. Tell us what you really think... Seriously, though, one would think that you could have come up with some more interesting modifiers than "very, very" (or "very, very, very") and "really". Certainly, someone sharing a radio network with Garrison Keillor, a network whose listener demographics show a certain intellectual acumen, could have dazzled us a little more.

Surprised? No. Disappointed? Well, let's just say that while the message was expected (boringly so), the verbiage was somewhat underwhelming.