Monday, February 28, 2011

Simply '70s: Defund public broadcasting


If you hadn't noticed, there was a hell of a fierce debate going on about federal funding of public broadcasting. In 1971.

Why, we could have the specter of taxpayers funding a fourth network! Both on television and on the radio. We hear they're very liberal. Not friendly at all to conservative values.

And what about localism?


Tsk, tsk. There's something very un-American about this whole pointy-headed enterprise, I tell you.

4 comments:

(c)2014 Richard L. Kent, Esq. (MichiganSilverback at gmail dot com) said...

Does it not bother you that your tax dollars are used to spread pro abortion, pro euthanasia, and anti-Christian propaganda? At least NBC CBS and ABC you can turn off at no cost to yourself.....

...particularly since the licensing fees from Sesame Street can finance the whole thing without any help from us.....

The Mighty Favog said...

Obviously, we watch/listen to different shows on PBS/NPR. The whack "propaganda" generally is no worse in public broadcasting than elsewhere, and I've generally found that *all* manner of divergent viewpoints -- including Not Progressive ones -- get a fairer hearing there than on the commercial channels.

As far as PBS goes, if you watch the PBS NewsHour, you'll find the predominant political slant is toward the Radical Centrists.

That David Brooks, he's gonna get thrown in Gitmo any day, no doubt. It's part of a devious center-left plot by Mark Shields, I hear.

(c)2014 Richard L. Kent, Esq. (MichiganSilverback at gmail dot com) said...

With respect, old friend, it does NOT change the fact that I have to PAY for the whack-job BS programming that I am not watching. And that I don't like. Not. one. bit.

Remember PJ O'Rourke's Rule from A Parliament of Whores: ALL public expenditure is extracted at pain of death. Pay the tax or go to jail. Stay in jail or get beaten up by guard. Fight back and be shot.

So: "Pony up for your neighbor's day care or it's curtains for you, Grandma!"

The Mighty Favog said...

Yeah, that's what Ayn Rand said, too. I came to the conclusion that she was full of shit.

Or at least that her philosophy was inconsistent with a) reality and b) being a decent human being. Then I became Catholic and went from there.

So far, that has been causing me to become less and less politically and economically conservative and more and more culturally conservative.

We live in the context of a society, which is governed (or used to be governed) as a commonwealth. Whether we like it or not, that's the way it is.

We ARE our brother's keeper -- don't yell at me, yell at God -- and things like public-service broadcasting are important to preserving a democratic, pluralistic commonweal.

Charlie Sheen is the ultimate, coked-out end of the whole every-man-is-an-island, "winners" vs. "losers" libertarian philosophy -- absolutely dysfunctional and insane but utterly unaware of the fact.