The president is going after public broadcasting—again—but it is getting harder and harder to take him seriously.
Drowning Big Bird in the bathtub
By
Renee Crawford
So many things are extremely troubling about President Bush's new budget cuts that it is hard to pick just one. So let’s start with one of my pet peeves...
The president is trying to kill Big Bird again.
Does he actually believe that the massive public outcry that killed this proposal last year has just dried up? Or did he put so many bad things in this year’s budget that he thinks we will not notice because we are too busy trying to keep the poor, the young and the old warm, fed and healthy? False choices are the bedrock of this president's strategy.
With all the death and destruction that the president has wrought around the world, Sesame Street is one of those havens on TV that my young children and I can use to escape the realities of all the craziness on the daily news reports. After the outcry last year from mom's and children nationwide you would think he would have gotten the point.
A good friend of mine calls it "starving the beast." You suck so much money out of the government coffers to give to the wealthiest people and corporations tax cuts and war profits that you nearly bankrupt the country and then cry that there's no money left to deal with domestic issues that could actually make the country stronger; like educating poor children so that they can become productive adults.
When Sesame Street started in 1969 the effect was almost immediate. By the early 1970s the test scores for children throughout the country and across economic boundaries entering kindergarten and first grade jumped substantially in areas that included reading readiness, socialization, and math skills. I like to call it The Sesame Street Effect.
Go ahead Mr. President, try to cut Sesame Street again. You apparently enjoyed the millions of letters, e-mails and phone calls you and your likeminded members of Congress received last year on this issue (one of the highest traffic issues of last year)...and this year we have a full, energetic and functioning blogosphere to reach more people than ever before!
Let's give it another round, but remember that now that we have the Internet, burying a bad idea in the middle of really bad ideas doesn't work as well. Too many of us have the information and the means to make a stink, and if we have to make a stink about 50 issues or 51 issues that's just one more blog, e-mail or phone call.
The people can and will stop this madness whether it's now by direct and relentless noise-making or in November with our votes. We are organizing, we have the tools, we have some success stories to sustain us, and we have the will.
February 23, 2006
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Renee Crawford lives in Shorewood, is the associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, and maintains the Crawford’s Take Web log in her spare time. This article does not reflect an official opinion of the ACLU or the ACLU of Wisconsin.
