Who’s Next?

This week we have more evidence that the government is taking care of the people’s business—in this case, with the “No More Funding for NPR Act” introduced in the House by Alabama Representative Dale Strong.

There are many things wrong with public broadcasting, in my view, but that doesn’t mean it should be defunded. Speaking personally, there’s a lot on public radio and television that I don’t care for, but there’s a lot I like, too. (Technically the pols should be going after the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives federal funding and distributes it to NPR and PBS, but CPB doesn’t lend itself as well to snappy derogatory catch-phrases.)

We are traveling a very dangerous route if we attempt to corral those crazy artistic types. As I’m sure many of you are doing or have done, I was a member of the board of the local arts council in our town. I’m not sure that a one-man Mark Twain show or the Stalingrad Brass (or whatever Eastern European town they hailed from) would rise to the level of evil that those governmental killjoys seem to think is corrupting our society.

Fun fact: The amount of money the government spends on public broadcasting is 0.008% of the federal budget. Maybe, just maybe, other things should take priority?

We always try to be helpful, so here’s a list of actual federal funding projects we may want to go after first:

• Mice on treadmills (an NIH project to observe the effects of exercise on Mickey and Minnie)
• Zombie Apocalypse preparedness (don’t ask)
• The Frogzilla Project (the Army studying the feasability of weaponizing large frogs)
• The impact of shoe-throwing (cultural and political implications of throwing shoes at political leaders)
• Jellyfish census (counting the number of jellyfish in the oceans)

But I digress. I have a question and a comment about the public broadcasting thing:

• Who decides what is appropriate cultural fare?
• When research firms started measuring noncommercial radio stations, they showed up in the top three or five in many markets.

This move is perilously close to the cries for revoking FCC licenses for news reporting that may not please our fearless leader. I don’t have an answer, but I’m not fond of the one on the table.