I find it hard to believe, but apparently Mr. Bush isn't happy to have seen a slight increase in his approval ratings recently. It seems he would like nothing more than to create a country of stupid unthinking people, who blindly care more about the offspring of temporary celebrity couplings than the real state of the world around them. Why else would he be pushing so hard to eliminate funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System?
Remarkably, the funding cuts he's encourage Congress to enact begin by ending support for commercial-free children's programming, including "Sesame Street," "Clifford", "Maya and Miguel" and others. I'm of a generation who learned their numbers, words and ideas about how to treat other people from the folks who live on "Sesame Street," and it saddens me to think that a future generation of kids might not have such a great source of education and entertainment to get them started.
Because they are government and listener/viewer funded, public broadcast need not rely on commercial revenue to drive their programming. That's why you don't hear or see the "fake news" pieces that get passed around by the "news leader" stations as legitimate stories, or "news stories" about what project your favorite celebrity is promoting any given week. NPR and PBS are trusted by more Americans than any other news source, and that's not accidental. They're probably the closest thing you'll find to real truth out there in the news business. It's called Free Press, it's an American tradition...and that Bush and his pals are trying to chloroform the idea should come as no real surprise, but like so much they're doing (or not), it ought to scare the hell out of us.
You might think I'm behind the times. We've heard this alarmism before, you're thinking. In fact, earlier this year, Congress restored some of the funding which had been cut for the current year, after more than 1.5 million Americans asked them to save our public broadcasting. But the truth is, House Republicans just voted to eliminate ALL FUNDING for public broadcasting in two years.
So where does that leave us loyal listeners and viewers? Well, we'd probably have to sort out news/information from never-ending fundraising appeals and odds are good the programs we rely on to bring us their independent and unbiased reporting would vanish, much like the radio and television signals they're broadcast upon. The real question is, what sort of country do we want to be living in in two years, or five years, or ten?
If what you're looking for is a country where we are fed a regular diet of artificial news designed to encourage us to take the latest drug remedy for an ailment you didnt' know you had, or distract us from the latest dirty doings of our elected officials with tales of sordid celebrity life, or to encourage us to watch the latest artificial reality show...and if you don't think you'll miss having a clue of what's really going on in the world around you...then by all means, sit back, bitch about the price of gas, read your Bible...and do nothing else.
But if you care...and I think you do...please, write letters, make phone calls...make sure everyone knows our public broadcasting is being gutted...and do everything you can to make sure this doesn't come to pass.
[We now return to our regularly-scheduled Garden Blog.]
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I believe that the PBS funding cut will come up again and again. The reason is very simple, it is one of the programs that actual benefit the common people, the tax payers. In our current corrupt government, money is diversed into funding the corporation, benefiting the millionaires, and the politicians. Mega tax cut is approved again this year for the oil industry, despite of its huge profit. And don't forget that the Congress just quietly approves the bill raising salaries of its own members. It costs a lot of money to run the election campaign. It's the special interest groups, and big corporation that put the politicians into their office. You and me can never afford the $1000 fund raise dinner, nor the $5000 private hand shake/meeting with the candidates. So next time if you heard a politician bragging about his/her years of public service, don't hesitate asking them of WHO did they serve.
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