Congress is dorking with PBS kids' programming, again

[drwex]

You might recall that last time around the Congressional Taliban managed to tangle up a child's show (Postcards from Buster) in the anti-gay demagoguery. This became a stalking horse for their efforts to slash funds from public broadcasting. Public hue and cry, they back down. Or rather, retreat temporarily, because guess what they're at it again.

I admit that I'm biased. PBS produces nearly the only TV that I'll let my kids watch unsupervised and I think supporting that is a fine use of my tax dollars. Stuff like Clifford and Sesame Street is worth keeping. Current proposals would cut about $95 million, or a quarter of the budget, starting in October.

Common Cause is blogging (and fundraising) around the effort to restore funding: http://www.commonblog.com/story/2006/6/12/1330/25932
The Boston Globe story on this from last week is here:
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/06/08/gop_takes_aim_at_pbs_funding/

I take particular umbrage at the Talib... excuse me, Republican effort to portray this as a tradeoff of funding against other social programs. How about we measure the tradeoff against things like tax cuts for rich folks, or against idiot earmarks like the infamous Bridge to Nowhere. *grump*

Comments

[feste-sylvain.livejournal.com]

How about we don't measure the "trade-off" at all?

With tax dollars in the production, the government gets to be a producer. This, of course, is a vile state of affairs, and should not continue.

I don't want the neo-con blue-nosed jackasses interfering with Sesame Street any more than you do. You just seem to believe that somehow it can be a governmental line-item without government interference.

[gentlescholar.livejournal.com]

This one always baffles me. Sesame Street is the only thing the government does that I can think of as an unalloyed good. I mean, they are setting themselves up as bad-movie villains here. They might as well strike a pose and growl and smile evilly into the cameras. What on earth are conservatives thinking? All I can imagine is, "Ack! Oh my God they are teaching poor people to read! We have to stop this! Even if we look bad trying, we have to try!"