Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Tune In, You Guys

The President of the United States wants to defund public television.


Yes, the Public Broadcasting Service, or PBS.

Non-American readers: If you want to understand the impact of this proposed defunding, please learn about PBS here. Actually, it's a good read for Americans, too, who might otherwise take the existence and ubiquity of public television for granted.

In a nutshell, if you live in the USA and have enjoyed any of these, it's because of PBS:

Muppets
Mister Rogers
Julia Child
The Electric Company
Bob Vila
Bob Ross (BOB F'ING ROSS, PEOPLE)
Monty Python
Fawlty Towers
Carl Sagan
Are You Being Served?
The PBS Newshour fka the McNeil/Lehrer Report
Sneak Previews with Siskel and Ebert
Austin City Limits (!!!)
Doctor Who
Clifford the Big Red Dog
Dragon Tales
Downton Abbey
Cosmos (COOOOOSSSSMMMOOOOSSSS)

But screw all that, because our current President wants to save approximately 0.05% of the total budget by slashing funding to PBS.

And we could totally appropriate that money for a gold-plated buttplug engraved with his initials, yo.

I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS AWESOME IMAGE, OK?

I'm so disheartened that this move is not motivated by a need to save money, but clearly by a need to destroy institutions that might with impunity question the right of our current Commander in Chief to do whatever the hell he wants at the expense of small, ineffective  players like, oh, the American People.

It's almost as if Trump promised - and is now fulfilling that promise - to be the President of the money-grubbing assholes who don't care about anything but their own wealth fuck yeah.

Because why else kill the network of Masterpiece Fucking Theater?

Yeah, I thought so.

My eyes are on 2018, Drunkards, when we can at least begin to take back America from the would-be fascist Scrooges of this country.

#Resist

Kill Masterpiece fucking Theater, my ass.

God Bless America.

1 comment:

  1. One thing that gives me a faint glimmer of hope is that in 1995 a new Republican-led Congress had shutting down PBS high on their list of priorities. There was a swift and loud outcry.
    And I'm pretty sure that video of Mr. Rogers testifying before Congress hadn't been uploaded to YouTube at the time.
    This isn't just going to affect public television. It would affect public radio too. You know, the same people who bring us Car Talk, Prairie Home Companion, and newer shows like Ask Me Another, a quiz show that features the music of Jonathan Coulton.

    That might get your attention.

    It's also always been interesting to me that it's PBS that's most unflinchingly critical of the same government that funds it, which says a lot about why we need public programming.

    ReplyDelete

You're thinking it, you may as well type it. The only comments you'll regret are the ones you don't leave. Also, replies to threads make puppies grow big and strong.