is it really that necessary to teach our children corporate greed?

I usually opt against political musing here on the blog, but this has been on my mind recently. Seems like the Republicans are making an effort to cut funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, citing the organizations liberal bias as a clear cause for concern. It is clear that the Republicans have there sights on fundamentally changing public radio and television in our country:

In an unexpected move yesterday afternoon, the House of Representatives approved a measure to restore $100 million of funding for NPR, PBS and local public stations. Republican leaders were proposing to slash $200 million from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, but you helped stop them.

Everyone said it was impossible to reverse any of the House cuts with Republicans in control. Yesterday's Washington Post described the divide between Democrats and Republicans like this: "[O]n Capitol Hill, it's hard to find a Republican with anything nice to say about National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting Service. Instead, they denounce them as liberal and elitist, when they bother to talk about them at all." Public broadcasting shouldn't divide Republicans and Democrats. More Americans trust NPR and PBS for balanced news and children's programming than any commercial network.3 Yet many Republicans have been intent on either gagging or starving public broadcasting.

So why did 87 Republicans break with the majority of their party and vote to restore the funding? In large part, because over 1 million of you signed the petition calling on Congress to reverse course. And over 40,000 of you made phone calls to your elected representatives. There was a surge of public outrage that couldn't be ignored. This victory was possible because we were joined by Free Press, Common Cause and strong allies in the House—Representatives Markey, Obey, Lowey, Dingell, Hinchey, Watson, Schakowsky, Blumenauer, Eshoo, Slaughter, and Leach, a brave Republican.

Despite this incredible progress, the House Republicans did manage to cut over $100 million, including funding for children's programming like "Sesame Street." We'll take our fight to the Senate when it considers the budget later this summer. But yesterday's vote makes it much more likely we can restore every last cent for NPR and PBS by acting together.

Yesterday also brought darker news in the fight for public broadcasting. The Republican-dominated board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) hired a former Republican National Committee chair as the next president, injecting partisanship into the very organization designed to shield public broadcasting from political meddling. This is only the latest effort by White House ally and CPB board chair Kenneth Tomlinson to remake public broadcasting as a partisan mouthpiece. To save NPR and PBS, we'll need to take on Tomlinson, but today we showed that the public can and will defend public broadcasting from partisan attack.

For now, we have a lot to be thankful for. Our kids can keep learning from PBS' children's programming. We can keep enjoying public broadcasting's in-depth, trustworthy news and cultural offerings. Most of all, we can be thankful for the ability of ordinary people to band together and do extraordinary things.

Now putting aside the fact that listeners to NPR had the lowest rate of misperception about politics than listeners/watchers of any of the other the "news" outlets (and it should be no surprise that individuals who only rely on Fox News were the least well informed), I find it reasonable that public radio should probably be void of partisanship, and if there is a left leaning slant, the Republicans are right to act to bring it back to center. In my opinion "public radio" should be as "fair and balanced" an outlet as possible. But it seems that the right wants to go beyond that and both dumb it down (is anyone else concerned with the propensity for the right to classify anything that is intellectual as elitist... it's as if in our political climate intelligence is a plague that we most cure) a transform the corporation for public broadcasting into another outlet for right wing politics.

Now this would be bad enough these proposed changes didn't adversely effect our kids. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is responsible for most of the children's programming that I find suitable for my daughter such as perenial favorite Sesame Street (we also watch Nick Jr.'s Dora the Explorer). Now while Sesame Street does emphasize many qualities like "sharing," "tolerance," and "honesty," I hate to think that we have come to the point in this country where we identify these as being "left wing" or "commie" traits. If the Republicans are successful in there attempts there are legitimate concerns that we might lose one of the few outlets for quality television programming.

First, by opening up public broadcasting to market forces we can expect Sesame Street to become either littered with advertisements designed to transform our children into mindless consumers of junk or actual advertisements for junk themselves. Recent statistics indicate that as much as 80% of (non-holiday) advertising during children's programming is for junk food (cereals, candy, McDonald's) and the government seems clear on it unwillingness to do anything to confront this. While Nick Jr. and the Disney Channel has minimized or limited the number of commercials scheduled during programming for small children (they concentrate them between shows), most children's television is not this considerate. Additionally, a majority of kids programming is little more than a 20 minute advertisement for more junk (e.g. Power Rangers, Yu-Gi-O!, Pokemon, et cetera). By ending Federal funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting current programming decisions will be "auctioned off to the highest bidder" and this all too often is someone who wants to fill your kid with unwholesome snacks.

Second, there is a reasonable fear that the Right will actively pursue "white washing" the CPB in efforts to promote their children's agenda as opposed to universal values. It wasn't long ago that Jerry Falwell was advocating a boycott of the Teletubbies under the justification that "Tinky Winky" (the purple one) was gay. And more recently the Right was once again outraged when an episode of "Postcards from Buster" had the title character visit a lesbian couple in Vermont. Making the Right's children's agenda to be hiding our children from those that are different and teaching us to be tolerant of only those who look like us. Now I am not, by any means, asserting that all Republicans think this way, but the Republicans have tied their hand to the ship that is the Conservative Christians and the Conservative Christians have a demonstrated record of intolerance to cultural diversity and religious tolerance and if given the distort the only quality children's programming to reflect their narrow agenda.