Care to include any examples? You wrote a long winded rant without any substance. I took a look around the http://www.npr.org/sections/news/ and didn't find anything that came close to your straw man.
Meanwhile your characterization of http://www.npr.org/music/ is a complete joke. Just glance at the categories of music NPR covers in the various colored tabs.
I suppose a kind reading of your writing would be that you misunderstand what you are hearing when your local classical station syndicates NPR content.
The point is that we listen to NPR because it is a way of posturing, not that the music is only classical.
The argument is about cargo cult intellectualism. NPR is great for what it is -- but the discussion here is about the way it fits into society, not the types of music it offers.
I'm not sure exactly what your question is. Am I to provide examples of social posturing and signalling? Aren't they fairly well-understood phenomenon?
You made the claim NPR Syndrome exists yet provide no examples besides hearing classical music discussed and a made up straw-man news story about Global Warming and puppies.
Then tell me I should just assume NPR Syndrome exists because you need it to for the rest of your piece to hold up? I don't think so. Especially when finding examples hosted on NPR's own website should be trivial.
Not to mention your vomit inducing caricature from Good Will Hunting generalized to a liberal arts education; reminds me of people claiming Steve Jobs and Bill Gates represent great role models for college freshman to follow and go drop out to strike out on their own.
You basically set up the article just so that you can argue against what you believe is the liberal intellectual poser who only exists in your head because it fits your political world view.
Indeed. Where I live I have three public radio/NPR stations. One has several music shows, one has a couple, and one has none (maybe Soundprints at 3am Monday mornings).
Meanwhile your characterization of http://www.npr.org/music/ is a complete joke. Just glance at the categories of music NPR covers in the various colored tabs.
I suppose a kind reading of your writing would be that you misunderstand what you are hearing when your local classical station syndicates NPR content.