NPR has a trivia show called Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me and host Peter Sagal is surprised that they don't get Republicans on it.

Well, it's a comedy program and on NPR you are only allowed to be funny about Republicans, not as one.  Sagal also seems perplexed as to why NPR has the reputation for being politically one-sided, the same way some in the Republican party wonder why they have the reputation for being more religious; it's true.

But it's no surprise they think they are balanced. While the political skew of listeners seems to be pretty well known, the advertising handouts for NPR brag about how many of the 1% that NPR advertisers will be reaching - Fox News only wishes they had that many rich, white people tuning in. 

What will be most fun is when all of the progressives in academic social fields attempt to science up the reason Republicans don't go on NPR - you know, a blanket excuse mashup of epigenetics and college student surveys; we've already had goofy claims about biology which would suggest that Republicans and Democrats are practically separate species - but social science also gave us biological claims that that not being racist hurts diversity, that people with messy offices are more racist than everyone else, that when liberals get drunk they become conservative and that the fronts of cars are fulfilling an evolutionary mandate, as is liking Justin Bieber. Why not find a common genetic basis for being conservative and lacking a sense of humor during an ongoing financial crisis and runaway scandals by the administration?

You can find almost anything if you survey enough psychology undergraduates. More epigenetics could bookend those papers saying that liberals are less fearful which then rationalize why they are super-smart for wanting to outlaw science that scares them so much (energy, medicine, food) any why they want to mandate things that don't terrify them, but should - ethanol, toxic batteries in hybrid vehicles and incredibly environmentally negative solar panels.

The good news: a social scientist creating that correlation-causation arrow about a genetic basis for Republicans and humor is guaranteed to get on NPR. Until then, it remains tough going for getting both sides to play along.
 But the person we really want on the show, who we’ll never get, is George W. Bush.”
Well, that's a given. Like him or not, Bush took the office seriously. He wasn't playing saxophone on Arsenio Hall or yukking it up with Leno, Letterman, The View, Jimmy Fallon, Jon Stewart, Oprah - you name it, President Obama has been on it.

But he was also not investigating reporters, blocking IRS approval for groups he did not like and engaging in foreign policy cover-ups, so a little stuffiness in a president may be okay.