It’s the NPR spring pledge drive this week. When I tuned in last Friday during my commute (at the start of the drive) I actually made a Homer-like groan. Not that I don’t love supporting my local NPR station, but the pledge drive is kind of annoying.
NPR has taken a more tongue-in-cheek approach to the drive over the years, from the Alec Baldwin pieces, to Ira Glass calling up individual listeners and asking them why they don’t give. A variation I heard this morning was from Jacob Goldstein calling up listeners and asking if one of them would be willing to cough up the $46 million to make pledge drives unnecessary for all NPR stations in the country for a full year.
Turns out they should have just called Homer. In the 11th season episode “Missionary: Impossible,” Homer anonymously pledges $10,000 to attempt to get back to regularly scheduled programming. Unfortunately the Pledge Enforcement team, headed by Betty White, tracks him down, forcing him to leave the country and teach gambling to natives. It gets a little fuzzy from there.
Another bit of evidence toward my theory that The Simpsons is relevant in every discussion. Have a happy Monday!
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Ben Trube is the author of the noir/technological mystery Surreality and a lot of books on fractals, including this one.
[BTW] : Ben Trube, Writer 
“… Ira Glass calling up individual listeners and asking them why they don’t give.”
They don’t actually do that, do they? I’d be super pissed if someone did that to me, even as a joke.