Know When To Fold 'Em

PBS -- wince in agony! Its bias! Why do we need government TV anyway? Wouldn't it be great to kill its funding?

Well, yeah, it'd be great. I hate the idea of government TV and hate the smarmy implementation.

But I watched a spokesman being interviewed on TV and I said "we'll never beat these guys, no sense even tryin'." They can always run to Sesame Street when the interview gets tough. The folks trying to pull the funding come off looking like the banker in "Mary Poppins." It's just not worth it. We're going to have a liberal, partisan broadcast network funded by our tax dollars until the end of time.

Accept. Then read Jonah

More relevant, with the obvious exception of “Sesame Street,” the target audience for PBS isn’t remotely the poor. It’s the well-to-do. Yes, some poor folks enjoy symphonies and entire shows dedicated to shiitake mushrooms and fennel. I have no doubt that there’s some lunch bucket Joe who races home after clearing roadkill all day just to catch “Washington Week in Review.” But, come on, who’re we kidding?

And that’s the great irony of the restored PBS budget cuts. Because budget rules said the money had to come from somewhere, Congress raided social programs for the poor to give Big Bird back his $100 million.

Which brings up another bogus argument. When public broadcasting’s integrity is attacked, the PBSers harrumph that government money is only a tiny fraction of their budgets. But, they say without taking a breath, if you take even one penny of it away, it will destroy us.

Yup, sure glad I'm ready to move on...

Posted by John Kranz at July 5, 2005 6:10 PM