Kim Kardashian, noted Internet-breaker and selfie-taker, charmed what we thought was the entire Internet, when she appeared on NPR's weekly radio quiz show "Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me" last weekend. We were incredibly mistaken.
Kardashian called into the show last Saturday, in part to promote her new book, "Selfish," a 448-page book of selfies. News of her guest appearance drew in hundreds of curious listeners who'd caught wind that she was a secret scholar of Kim Jong Un, her "rival" celeb.
Many of those listens, it turns out, were "hate-listens." According to a recent NPR post, aptly titled "What's All The 'Kommotion' About Kim Kardashian On 'Wait Wait'?," many of the NPR regulars who tuned in to the Saturday program have since threatened to pull their donations (some even claiming to have done so already).
NPR's Elisabeth Jensen singles out one Vermont listener in her post who wrote in, saying: "I recently gave a small gift to my local NPR station. Had I heard your Saturday show before I made my gift, I wouldn't have donated. The Kardashians represent much of what is wrong with America today — and I listen to NPR to get AWAY from Kardashian-like garbage."
Jensen, like any professional content creator these days, is used to the everyday stream of hate-mail. But she says that she's never seen anything quite like the hate-mail she received post-Kim K.'s radio spot.
She writes:
I will admit it. In my not–quite five months as NPR's Ombudsman, I've found one reliable source of joy: the Monday morning email—there's at least one each week—from a listener outraged by whatever bad taste joke Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! has told on its latest episode. This Monday, the inbox was overflowing.
I am decidedly not mocking the listeners' devotion to the religion they hold sacred, to their gluten-free diets, to their right to own however many cats they want and not be painted as "crazy," to their belief that all 90-year-olds should not be lumped together as unsafe drivers, to defeating stereotypes of [insert ethnic group name here]—all the sources of unhappiness when Wait Wait dared poke a bit of fun.
But, well, it is a humor show and an equal opportunity offender. Many listeners seem willing to laugh until the comedy is turned on something that touches their own lives or sensitivities. Does the show occasionally seem sophomoric or cross a line? Perhaps. But rarely, if ever, does the fun come across—to me, anyway—as mean-spirited.
Read Elisabeth Jensen's full analysis via NPR here.
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