Donald Trump was an evil man who wanted to get rid of PBS so he can have more money to spend paying hookers to piss on Russian beds.
Because we don’t require people to know the basics of how their government works, word on the street once upon a time was that the Trump Administration was going to cut all of the funding for the public arts. It was simply not true. It’s not true in a way that is obvious on its face: Congress, not the president, passes spending bills, which includes monies for things like PBS, NPR, and the NEA. The president can make recommendations but that’s all. President Obama made suggestions for years and was ignored, even by his own party, because that’s how life works. Congress isn’t going to take a proposed budget and just pass it willy-nilly: how would they get their earmarks then?
However, just because Trump personally cannot get rid of PBS doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done. So what do I propose? Simple, We Kill The PBS.
PBS exists because people don’t want to seem mean and to subsidize programming no one watches. We know this because if it could survive on its own it would. Instead, the government pays artists and talking heads to be artists and talking heads. Art is often, and talking heads are always, political.
The government picking and choosing those who will then critique the government — nothing bad can possibly come of this.
Oh, yes, I know, you think the arts are important. Not important enough for you to pay for it, of course, but important. And so you buy into the narrative that if we don’t have PBS, culture dies.
We live in an age where via the power of the Internet, you can now literally – literally – watch every single TV channel on earth. And if you’re a Luddite without the Internet, just a TV? Since forever, there have been free TV channels. You’ve heard of them: ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and so on. You don’t pay a dime for them. You just put up an antenna and voila! programming.
KILL PBS NOW
With no appreciation for irony, strawmen bleat that Trump is infringing on the First Amendment because of who gets press access while simultaneously demanding the further support of a government sponsored media outlet. Like all things related the government, it isn’t about what the government is doing now, it’s about what it could do later.
Government power doesn’t only reside in your side’s hands. If you’re a person with the ability to critically think, you understand that you – yes, YOU, not me, not them, not the third person “one,” but YOU – should give the government power assuming the other side will use it, because they will. Ask yourself, Mr. Nice Guy PBS Lover, do you want Donald Trump to decide what kind of programming your kids watch?
(Porn. The answer is porn. Donald Trump, if he could, would make your kids watch Pussy Grabbing Porn.)
Except for old women who devour that show about the butlers in England, no one watches PBS. I know this because I have Facebook and Twitter, see all the memes, and take in the zeitgeist of the moment with the ease a dolphin glides through the Great Barrier Reef (RIP)(Oh, wait, the predictions about the Great Barrier Reef dying due to global warming also turned out to be hysteria… Funny how that happens.)
Time and again, I see pithy memes mentioning how Trump wanted to get rid of Sesame Street. It’s a good appeal to emotion, as it makes real an abstract concept. Who could possibly object to funding Sesame Street of all things? You’d have to be a big mean jerk to do that! Is Trump a scaredy cat, afraid of Elmo and his message of peace and free hugs?
Except that PBS doesn’t fund Sesame Street. A few years back, it came out that The Street was in the red – to the tune of $11 million in 2014 alone. The most famous programming on PBS couldn’t break even, which speaks volumes about PBS in general. So, HBO stepped in and Sesame Street now airs alongside Game of Thrones for nine months before it’s shifted over to PBS. You People would know this if you actually watched PBS.
Not only is Sesame Street privately funded, it’s privately funded by the most exclusive TV channel in America. And lest you forget, HBO isn’t in the habit of losing money. Unlike the government, real world laws of profit and loss apply to HBO. HBO isn’t a Wall Street Bank receiving a bailout then carrying on broadcasting soft core porn. HBO figured out a way to make a profit off Sesame Street, why couldn’t PBS?
PBS, Sesame Street, and Donald Trump: This Time, It’s Personal
That this may also be personal for Trump underscores the absurdity of the government financing a TV channel in the first place. There’s a character on Sesame Street that is a take off of Trump, one who has been around since at least 1994. He’s named “Ronald Grump” and he’s a builder and a big meanie.
Someone at Sesame Street spent countless hours actually building a garbage tower to parody Donald Trump; what a loser. Why was Sesame Street bothering with Donald Trump in the first place? It’s not like he was president back then or anything. The government partially funded a show that told little kids a private citizen is a jerk. What a great use of taxpayer money.
Dear Mr. PBS, don’t sit around and claim to be wholesome and innocent and “we just want to teach kids to count” and then go after private individuals. For heaven’s sake, you’re Sesame Street not SNL.
Under threat of eventual imprisonment, Donald Trump was forced to give money in the form of taxes to people that made fun of him (I’ll check with Rachel Maddow to see how much he gave). I wonder why the program wasn’t in the black…
Imagine if I put a gun to your head and made you pay me for these words; give me money so I can swear too much in an article mocking a large number of people who, misguided though they may be, probably just want to be nice – or else! These idiots manage to make Flop Sweat With A Toupee And A Lifetime Membership to LA Tan, of all people, a victim of Bert and Ernie. That takes some talent, I’ll admit. Not enough talent to pay the bills but talent.
I hope Trump shoots Big Bird and mounts him above his bed so the hookers have something to look at.
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