listening to NPR.

Dear Ira Glass -

Has it come to this? Have the purse strings tightened to the point that NPR has resorted to pressure? Celebrity pressure to keep the contributions coming in?

Today, while I finished the dishes, I could have sworn that I heard you threaten to call people who are NPR listeners but who have never donated money. McCarthyism at its finest. You requested that listeners turn in their friends. Send their contact info and you will call and ask them why they don't donate. All in an effort to get friends and family to rat out those they love.

In return? Those who do not donate will get a call from you, while on the air, and have to answer your questions as to why they do not donate - all in the effort to get them to relent to the pressure. The celebrity pressure and the public humiliation simultaneously thrown at us.

Some may see this as a creative form of finding new donors. I see it as threatening and manipulative. In many ways I would rather not donate in a stand of defiance against such tactics. Similar to the feeling in high school of not voting for a prom king and queen - just because everyone else was. (And I'm totally against naming royalty in honor of their popularity. Actually I'm just against royalty in general.)

I feel for the few I heard stuttering in embarrassment as you pelleted them with questions. And my personal guilt for not donating vanished.