We have questions too
One of those items going the rounds on Facebook, original source unknown:
“Why should coal miners pay for PBS”? This was an actual question asked by the Trump administration yesterday. Obviously a blatantly stupid question. We have questions too. Why should a poor black family in Detroit pay for the President to go golfing? Why should a single mother of 3 who’s working 2 jobs in Louisiana be denied health-care so that the CEO of Etna can get a tax-break? Why is the guy washing dishes in Baton Rouge paying for the President’s wife’s secret service protection so she can live comfortably in NYC? We could do this all day. But here’s the real question the Trump administration and the Republicans who empower him need to answer: Do you have a heart? Did no one teach you to care about your neighbors? Do you know what “empathy” means? Did no one ever teach you to “share” when you were in kindergarten? Have you never heard the phrase “do unto others”? I can’t think of a group of people who need to watch Sesame Street MORE than the Republican party. Perhaps they would learn some common decency. Copy and paste folks. This shit is ridiculous.
But there’s another thing, which is how contemptuous it is to assume that coal miners can’t possibly like anything on PBS. Really? No science, no nature, no history? No dance, no music, no drama, no imported comedies and soaps? It’s not as if PBS pumps out a steady diet of Wittgenstein or Derrida, and it’s also not as if all coal miners want nothing but football and porn.
Coal miners, and chicken processors and strawberry pickers and truck drivers, get a lot more out of PBS than they do out of Donnie’s weekends in Palm Beach.
Don’t forget Secret Service Agents might have a life, too. On the side.
Worth noting in fact that the concept of organisations such as the Workers Education Association have their roots in the desire of working class people to attain the level of education hitherto only available to the wealthy. PBS and similar organisations are conceptually an offshoot of such educational and self-improvement movements. They’re actually the reverse of elitist, which in reality is why the republicans and right wing organisations everywhere oppose them.
Educated poor people are far less malleable than ignorant poor people. I’ve said it before, the history of the last 30-40 years has been that of attacks on education by the right. Sometimes outright, more usually subtle degradation.
I can think of at least one high-level, non-poor ignorant person who is eminently malleable to low-level manipulation. Not by PBS or NPR though, to hazard a guess.
One of the Right’s standard propaganda lines is that public broadcasting caters mainly to the university educated urban elites. That’s not the reality of course, the truth is that public broadcasting is generally respected by the public, particularly as a source of unbiased news which is the real target of the Right’s ideologues. If they manage to emasculate it, the public will be at the mercy of corporate propagandists. Imagine if all the major news services were run by Murdoch’s paid parrots.
PBS has long been a whipping boy for the right. The thought of public anything galls them, and in fact, they have suffered so many budget cuts that they have to constantly hold out the begging bowl, with their various weeks devoted to putting on programming that is popular enough to attract potential donors.
During the past year alone, there has been a steady diet of a mixture of things that “cultural elites” and “the masses” would enjoy. You can swing from country music specials through jazz to rock and roll, and finally to classical, depending on your tastes. You can watch lions mating, or penguins swimming, or Shakespearean productions done up in the finest of theatrical events from his own home country. There is something for everyone, even if not everyone realizes it. (well, maybe there isn’t anything for someone who only watches sports, or only watches porn, but otherwise….) My husband and I love PBS because we have very eclectic tastes and it is one place we can find some of the oddities we like to watch.
Time for some Elite Programming. When I’m enraged by Trumpian evil, Mrs. Slocombe and her pussy can still make me laugh.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iD2PZALMNAs
PBS went from broadcasting John Coltrane and Ned Rorem to ‘Riverdance’ and John Tesh in concert. They cannot lower their standards fast enough to keep up with the debasement of U.S. culture.
All Kardashians, all day, maybe THAT would appease the Repuglicans enough.