Given the piss-poor quality of just about all television programming, our family does, with great scrutiny, watch the Public Broadcasting Station on occasion. I have to be careful, however, with the liberal rhetoric on Sesame Street. I don't want to have to explain why Bert and Ernie are now partners. It's enough to try explaining the whole "Cookie Monster" confusion.
In case anyone is unaware, PBS provides some "educational" and science based programming at taxpayers’ expense. Basically, it’s welfare TV.Well, in the last 10 years or so, PBS has been ratcheting up their liberal standards. The latest is their move to forbid “sectarian” programming. More specifically, they want God to leave PBS and head to the Internet. The new policies say if you are going to be a PBS station, you can’t have any religious broadcasting. PBS has decided that it will not allow its affiliates to carry any religious shows. If anywhere on their schedule, at any hour of the day or night, a religious show is aired; they are kicked out of PBS.
THAT color isn’t allowed in the rainbow.
This was an issue earlier this week when it looked like five long-time PBS stations were going to be excommunicated for having religious shows. In every instance, this programming went back for decades, but in the new world of acceptance, tolerance, diversity and multiculturalism, religion is, of course, unacceptable.
Four of the stations run what most of us call Mass For Shut-Ins. Every week, a priest comes out to the studio, says Mass, and it is broadcast. Traditionally, this has been for people who were unable to get to church, typically because they were ill or elderly.
Somehow, this offends the liberal minds at PBS. Somehow, an hour of that in the week violates their standards and cannot be tolerated.
The fifth station was KBYU – at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah.
BYU is owned by the Mormon Church, and for years, KBYU as broadcast devotionals, and excerpts of speeches from the Mormons’ big twice-a-year General Conference. These are religious talks. They are broadcast in a community comprised of a very high percentage of Mormon people. They’ve been doing it that way for decades.
And PBS said it had to end.
Somehow, this offends the liberal minds at PBS. Somehow, an hour of that in the week violates their standards and cannot be tolerated. The new policy states that stations involved must begin the process of moving their religious programming from their TV product to their Internet product. That means that PBS wants the stations to figure out a way to get the shows off the air and onto the web. Instead of tuning in, they want people to have to click in, which, while terribly fashionable, is not practical. No matter what your 13-year-old tells you, people are more prone to watch TV on TV than on some other medium or device.So what should we make of this, and what should we do about it?
Well, we should see all the talk about diversity for exactly what it is – bull crap.The political correctness that permeates this most-liberal of all television networks demands what it is not willing to give. In the name of diversity, it enforces orthodoxy. Instead of parity, it wants priority. While preaching tolerance, it practices intolerance. Its species of inclusion does not include the mainstream.
A network that would angrily denounce any sort of “censorship” for its “journalists,” clearly practices censorship on its affiliates. While it claims to practice unrestrained freedom in its work, it refuses any such freedom to programmers or believers.And once again, religion is discriminated against in American society. Worse, this discrimination is done at taxpayer expense. In a world where the marketplace supports hundreds of channels, PBS still clings to the lie that society somehow needs one channel to provide their standards of programming at the expense of the taxpayer.
Well, it doesn’t. Somehow Nova and Big Bird would still be ridiculously profitable, even if they lost their PBS welfare check.The bottom line is this: Religious people should return the favor. If they are not welcome on PBS, then PBS shouldn’t be welcome in their homes, their pocketbooks or voting booths.
If PBS can’t give religious people anything, then probably religious people shouldn’t give PBS anything. Maybe it’s time to stop donating money and maybe it’s time to contact politicians and have them stop donating money as well.Resist the temptation to donate during the telethons, even if they DO put the best shows on during their campaigning, just to get you to pay.
If you think PBS should ban all religious programming, then support PBS. If you think PBS is wrong to impose this blanket ban, and then oppose PBS.It’s as simple as that.
