Operation Sesame Street
President and Congress Attacks Public Broadcasting

If you only make one phone call today (and let’s face it, if you’re like most phone-obsessed Americans, you’re probably going to make a lot more than that), that one phone call should be to your Congressional representative to tell him or her that you strongly oppose today’s (June 23rd) bill that would reduce federal spending for public broadcasting by 25 percent.

If you don’t do it for yourself, then at least do it for me.

Here’s why. I pay just as much (percentage-wise) in taxes as everyone else in this country but I get much less in return. I don’t have any kids but I have no problem with my taxes going to the public school system in this country. Mo’ teachers, mo’ better, I always say.

My taxes are also paying for a war that I definitely didn’t want. The current cost of the War in Iraq is quickly approaching $180 billion dollars. If you want that spelled out with all the zeroes, it looks like $180,000,000,000. A conservative estimate is that over two thousand of my hard-earned tax dollars have gone to support that war and have contributed to the deaths of over 1,500 US military personnel and over 100,000 Iraqi citizens.

If it had been up to me, I would have used my portion of that $180 billion and spent it to refurbish our schools, roads and bridges, update our military, help the tsunami victims in the Pacific, and given a hefty chunk to the folks at the Public Broadcasting System.

Yes, it seems that Bert, Ernie, Big Bird and all the rest of the gang at PBS are under fire from the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled House and Senate. On June 16, the House Appropriations Committee voted to eliminate 25 percent of federal funding for public broadcasting. The full House of Representatives will address this appropriations bill starting today.

To make ends meet in the face of proposed budget cuts, Sesame Street’s Fozzie Bear will moonlight in The Groucho Marx Story on the Biography channel.

If you listen to many Republicans, they will tell you that PBS is a deadwood arm of the government that is not carrying its own weight. That’s really not accurate and over the past few decades the Public Broadcasting System and National Public Radio have been primarily supported by corporate sponsors, commercials, and private donations generated by their local affiliates’ seemingly endless “beg-a-thons.”

Western North Carolina has a vested interest in this bill as some of our most popular radio stations including WDAV, WETS and WNCW are supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

“If adopted, these cuts would be very harmful to WNCW and the service we provide because federal funding makes up about 18 percent of our annual income,” said David Gordon, station manager for WNCW. “This means WNCW’s level of self-sufficiency is more important than ever and membership from people who appreciate our programming is more important than ever.”

That means less music and news, more beg-a-thons.

In the grand scheme of how much money this country’s current government spends, the 25 percent cut in PBS funding really won’t help fight the war on terrorism, help old people get prescription drugs, or do much of anything else. Currently, the federal budget includes about $400 million for public broadcasting and the proposed cuts will bring it down to about $300 million.

$400 million sounds like a lot until you consider that it equals about one dollar and forty cents for every citizen in the country per year to see and hear insightful programming not available anywhere else. For comparison, $400 million is one-third of the $1.2 billion recently passed by lawmakers to spend by the government of Mecklenburg County (Charlotte) for the coming year.

No, the proposed cut is really just a way of the president and his legion of conservative “yes men” in Congress to beat down what they consider to be a public voice outside of their control. The “my way or the highway” mentality of the Bush Administration and its supporters is evident as they single-mindedly try to paint PBS as a liberal institution with an anti-Bush agenda. Fox News commentator and presidential lapdog Bill O’Reilly recently called PBS and NPR “left wing precincts,” a phrase reminiscent of Newt Gingrich’s vow in the mid-1990s to “zero out” funds for public broadcasting.

Well, now that you mention it, that whole urban cast from Sesame Street does seem a little too hip and multi-cultural. Has anyone checked Count Count’s immigration status? And what about Antiques Roadshow? Isn’t encouraging Americans to buy and sell antiques just a plot to undermine U.S. manufacturers of new items? Even Austin City Limits is more likely to promote the music of aging left-wing tax dodgers like Willie Nelson than it is to sing the praises of Nashville chest-thumping flag-wavers like Alan Jackson. What’s up with that?

Seriously though, most of the programming on UNC-TV and other public broadcasting stations is about as middle of the road as you can get. Just this spring, Watauga High School’s quiz bowl team won the state championship in Raleigh and classmates and parents were able to watch the action live on UNC-TV. Every year it airs performances of the best Christmas music you’ll hear on TV. And if you are interested in our region’s history, culture, flora and fauna, UNC-TV is the station to watch.

If promoting learning and a love for the environment is contrary to our president’s agenda, maybe it is not public broadcasting we should be trying to get rid of.

If you want to call your congressperson, the main number for Congress is (202) 224-3121. A searchable database of congressional representatives is available at www.nccbi.org/north_carolina_us.htm.