I did a post over the weekend with the heading “Belated Fulminations.” It was about NPR, PBS, their funding, and so on. Well, let me add a fulmination now. Thought of it on a hike, after that initial posting.
If our government-funded media had a conservative slant, to say nothing of a deep conservative bias, wouldn’t you be embarrassed? I mean, if you were a conservative, as I am. Wouldn’t you be mortified? Wouldn’t you want to say, in effect, “Not in my name”? We would be screaming for an end to federal funding. We would not want tax dollars going to support our bias. We would think that grossly unfair.
Why don’t liberals feel the same way? Why don’t they say, “You know, we’ll try Radio America and other such things. We’re not going to make the entire country pay for liberal opinion media.”
Let me make three related points, or at least points that I hope you’ll think are related:
1) During the Lewinsky scandal, some liberals said to me, “Oh, you’re just doing what you’re doing because a Democrat’s in the White House.” I would answer, “Are you kidding? If it were a Republican, I’d be at the White House gates, baying for his resignation.” Because, for one thing, that Republican would have been tainting my entire camp.
If a conservative president had used a 21-year-old intern for sex and then proceeded with perjury, subornation of perjury, obstruction of justice, witness tampering, abuse of power, and all the rest — we conservatives would have been beside ourselves, demanding that he leave. It would have been incumbent on us, our responsibility, to get him out. We wouldn’t have left it to liberals to do, or try to do.
2) I once said the following to an Arab interlocutor: “In the West, there is a mosque on virtually every street corner. In Saudi Arabia, churches and synagogues are banned. In Saudi Arabia, the penalty for possession of the Bible is expulsion — that’s if you’re a foreigner. If you’re a citizen, the penalty is beheading. What do Saudis think of this situation? Are they a little uncomfortable about the imbalance: a West full of mosques, and a Saudi Arabia that bans other religions?”
My interlocutor said, “They don’t feel in the least uncomfortable. They think it’s perfectly natural, the way it ought to be.”
3) I would rather be held up, on the golf course — would rather be a victim of slow play — than hold up. Nothing is more discomforting than holding others up.
Frankly, I don’t understand how you can take tax dollars, set up liberal radio and liberal television, and call it “national.” And then call everyone who objects to what you’re doing a philistine or boob. Gross, yuck.
Okay, I think I’m done fulminating, at least on this subject.