Well, it’s clear (to me, now) where the name came from, but on rising this morning, it was a mystery (and it’s still a mystery why it came to me at that particular moment). Most readers of this blog will still be puzzled — unless they’re from the San Francisco Bay area and belong to the class of latte-drinking, sushi-eating, New York Times-reading — and, crucially, NPR-listening — folks alluded to in the wonderful subtitle of Geoff Nunberg’s 2006 book Talking Right (Geoff unaccountably left out NPR-listening, but maybe the publishers just couldn’t fit it onto the cover):
How Conservatives Turned Liberalism Into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show
(or you can call us cheese-eating surrender monkeys, for short; for the record, I adore cheese and I opposed American military intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan).
April Dembosky is a reporter for KQED (public tv and radio) in San Francisco.
(Geoff’s subtitular list of characteristics allows for exceptions and substitutions, beyond the exclusion of tax-raising and freak show — though I’ve voted for local and state tax increases and as a conspicuous faggot, I definitely count as a freak to the right wing. I no longer drink lattes, but rather green tea. When I had a car, it was a Camry, not a Volvo. And I have no body piercings (or tattoos, even). But I cop to eating sushi, reading the NYT, liking Hollywood, and definitely swinging left. And of course listening to NPR.)
A sample of Dembosky’s work (of very local interest to me), “Behind the Scenes at the Stanford Laptop Orchestra” of 4/25/15, includes this biographical sketch of Dembosky (probably written by Dembosky herself):
April Dembosky is the health reporter for The California Report and KQED News. She covers health policy and public health, and has reported extensively on the economics of health care, the roll-out of the Affordable Care Act in California, mental health and end-of-life issues.
Her work is regularly rebroadcast on NPR and has been recognized with awards from the Society for Professional Journalists (for sports reporting), and the Association of Health Care Journalists (for a story about pediatric hospice). Her hour-long radio documentary about home funerals won the Best New Artist award from the Third Coast International Audio Festival in 2009.
April occasionally moonlights on the arts beat, covering music and dance. Her story about the first symphony orchestra at Burning Man won the award for Best Use of Sound from the Public Radio News Directors Inc.
Before joining KQED in 2013, April covered technology and Silicon Valley for The Financial Times, and freelanced for Marketplace and The New York Times. She is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism and Smith College.
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