I found the following bit from the Weekly Standard’s “Scrapbook” on the impending end to Ken Tomlinson’s tenure as chairman of the Board of Broadcasting Governors nearly perfectly on point, so I’ll reproduce it here, with minimal interpolation:
Last week, with neither hype nor headlines, Ken Tomlinson asked the president not to resubmit his name for another term as chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (though he will serve until a successor is confirmed). His departure will mark the end of a long and valorous career in public broadcasting that began in 1982, when he took the helm at Voice of America. Besides the BBG, his service during the Bush administration included time as chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
From the beginning, he was the target of a relentless and dishonest smear campaign led by Democratic members of Congress, the public broadcasting establishment, and liberals inside both CPB and BBG. As Tomlinson sought to strengthen America’s image throughout the world, investigators in Washington pored over his email and phone records in a desperate search for signs of malfeasance. Tomlinson’s political enemies instigated the inquiries and cheered from the sidelines.
The irony: These members of the so-called “peace party” thwarted the efforts of a Bush appointee whose job was to carry out exactly the kind of public diplomacy in the Middle East that liberals tell us can be so effective in preventing wars.
Well, sure. But I’ll go the Scrapbook one better: the real irony is that those on the left who make those kinds of claims are the same people who constantly remind us that their own defeatism and willingness to play into the hands of enemy propaganda to gain political capital against their domestic partisan adversaries has no appreciable effect on how wars are won or lost, or on how the public comes to interpret events about which they are asked to form judgments and, ultimately, vote upon.
Or, to put it another way, the meta-irony is that these progressives don’t even believe in their own stated beliefs—unless, of course, those beliefs can be marshalled in the cause of their one real goal: accumulating power and presenting themselves as the intellectual saviors of a nation in thrall to sinister neocon plots to undermine liberty.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in the words of Bill Moyers, as you’ll soon see.
Tomlinson earned the enmity of the left because he took his job seriously. If American taxpayers are going to fund public broadcasting—at home and abroad—the programming should reflect basic American values.
Just to speed things up, allow me to anticipate the “progressive” response and answer it quickly: “American values,” the argument goes, is an empty phrase, assuming, as it does, that there is some homogenized set of “values” that a diverse body politic would willingly adopt, leaving those who question such “values” as, by default and by definition, un-American.
The counter to such backdoor relativism being that dissent is itself an American value, whereas tinpot Machiavellianism is not; and that when one speaks of “basic American values,” one is not, as (secular) progressives are quick to claim, necessarily talking about Christian values.
Instead, it is proper to read American values in this instance as American civic and Constitutional values—and in so doing, spare the red herring arguments that will invariably try to turn such a phrase into an attack on presumed Evangelical or Christian arrogance.
But back to Tomlinson:
He recognized the overwhelming liberal bias of NPR and PBS and had the audacity to do something about it.
For this, he was attacked relentlessly as his critics played dumb: Bias? What bias?
As if to provide an answer, PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers announced last week his return to public broadcasting. He attacked the mainstream media as slaves on a plantation, captive of the “neoconservatives” and the “war party.” He seems actually to believe this.
—Pinch the warmongering closet Likudnik! Somebody form a committee! We must ferret out the witches and burn them! —
Moyers announced a new documentary called “Buying the War,” but made no mention of the vast wealth he has made over a lifetime sucking from the public television teat. Speaking to an audience of the fringe left, ever humble, he cast his return to television as a solemn duty [prepare to gag]:
I ‘m coming back, because it’s what I do best. Because I believe television can still signify, and I don’t want you to feel so alone. I’ll keep an eye on your work. You are to America what the abolition movement was, and the suffragette movement, and the civil rights movement. You touch the soul of democracy. It’s not assured you will succeed in this fight. The armies of the Lord are up against mighty hosts. But as the spiritual sojourner Thomas Merton wrote to an activist grown weary and discouraged protesting the Vietnam war, “Do not depend on the hope of results. Concentrate on the value and the truth of the work itself.”
What is evident even in that small snippet is not only the arrogance of the self-appointed media and intellectual elite, but beyond that, a glimpse into the structure at work behind the organization of that elite. There are, that is to say, clearly levels within this hierarchy, and Moyers—by virtue of his preening paternalism and the audience’s unwillingness to laugh him off the pulpit—seems to have reached the status of a kind of Grand Poobah of public progressivism.
All that’s missing is the robe and the water buffalo-horned hat.
While Moyers and his comrades congratulate each other, Tomlinson is undertaking a valuable new project. In his January 9 letter to the president, he said he had decided “it would be far more constructive to write a book on my experiences rather than to seek to continue government service.” There is much to say and an urgent need for the country to hear it. THE SCRAPBOOK has one piece of advice for Tomlinson: Write quickly.
And here’s more advice: test Moyers’ thesis and submit the book to the New York Times Book Review.
If they come out ranting about the pervasive bias within public broadcasting—and about the need for full-scale reform—then we can safely side with Moyers and declare the Gray Lady one of a number of secret soldier among the mighty hosts who are fighting the armies of the Lord in obeissance to their neocon masters.
And if not? We can safely stuff Moyers back in mothballs where he belongs.
Can we stuff Daniel Schorr in mothballs, too?
If it was up to me, I’d just dip him in naptha and set him afire.
It would be safer, sjy.
Your Taxpayer Dollars at Work.
I am always amazed by what a self-satisfied prick Moyers is. And by his complete lack of self-awareness.
Moyers has no self awareness since he only sees himself as ‘Bill Moyers’ – if you get my meaning.
Ha ha ha! You’d never find Dan Collins using illeism!
Man you just made me blow snot on my monitor! Damn.
Moyers cures secularism?
Screw it, I like Bill Moyers and, for the most part, his work on PBS. I’m not inclined to treat a Moyer’s report as news reporting and am alert to the reality that his work is bias.
Other media reports on Moyers highlight that he’s a prick. One a while back noted a requirement of Bill’s that he be photographed while backlit wearing a cowboy hat. Okay – fine – Moyers isn’t Mister Rogers.
Well, Ken Burns might mainline heroin and campaign for LaRouche but I liked ‘The Civil War’ all right and thought ‘Baseball’ was pretty good. Going back – Civilisation, Ascent of Man, Ring of Truth, Sister What’sherName art stuff – all good, solid PBS work.
I thought Moyer’s series with Joseph Campbell was terrific, mostly because Moyers stayed the hell out of Campbell’s way. His ‘Amazing Grace’ piece wasn’t tainted with liberal bias, that I detected.
I like PBS – I have no problem with Our Tax Money being used to support the organization to the extent that it is I’m not an Objectivist or HardCore Libertarian – so sue me.
And I voted for Bush twice, still support the GWoT and Iraq, and I am a veteran, and thus beyond reproach by you non-serving chickenviewers
… so fuck off.
Fwiw, here is Moyer’s speech.
Moyer’s Speech
Sure, he’s a barking moonbat. But so long as he stays on PBS, we can be assured that very few people will be watching – and at least 1/2 of the viewers know what the deal is with Moyers.
In the words of Don Rumsfeld, for most, Moyers is a ‘known known’
BS–
Okay, but would you hit Paris Hilton?
I discovered Tomlinson’s sainthood when I googled “tomlinson misappropriation funds pbs”. Whew!! Mother Theresa, watch out, Kenny only two miracles (a best-selling book and a pardon?) and he’ll be sainted too!
Any ideas on what’s gonna happen to those liberal voices like Bill Buckley, Toiny Blankley, Pat Buchanan, the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal that will now fail to be silenced by….oh hold it, they’re on every week.
Go to go, Cavuto is interviewing Hooters girls on Fox and I hear one of them is pro-surge.
Dan,
If it were late and the thai tranny hookers weren’t around … and the Val-u-rite vodka was kicked …
I don’t know.
I honestly don’t know.
Not even with a rented truck, let alone my own.
There are some things paint shouldn’t have to endure.
BS-
I agree with you about PBS. Despite some of the insufferability and self-congratulation, there’s some pretty good stuff presented thereon. Moyers’s interviews with Campbell were extraordinary, and the recent presentation of Dickens’s Bleak House with Gillian “Dana Scully” Anderson was top-notch. Utah has three broadcast educational stations, two of them PBS, and if it weren’t for them, I would never have seen the wonderful Jeeves and Wooster they’ve been rerunning lately, nor Rosemary and Thyme, a murder-mystery series starring two landscapers who use their plant knowledge to solve crime (I love gardening). It doesn’t get any better than that.
Nova, Nature, American Experience, Antiques Roadshow? Bring. It. On.
I don’t have cable, so I can’t get the artsy-fartsy, nature, documentary, and BBC stuff any other way.
Not even with *your* dick, let alone mine…
Hey, gentlemen never tell.
The real question being, of course, why should I have to pay for dicentra’s TV access shortfall (although you might look into DirecTV) or BS’s love of PBS? YOU like it, YOU pay for it and keep your hands out of my wallet.
If Bill Moyers hit Paris Hilton, and televised it–would anybody watch then?
Yeah, RC, I know.
Fwiw, Dagny Taggert and John Galt are still living over in Atlantis, Colorado. Just rent a plane, fly towards the mountains and crash, you’ll find them.
I hear they have good cigarettes there.
Say ‘hi’for me
– $ –
Well that depends on if he hits her, or just hits her.
Shove a buncha government money into your own pocket, accuse Tinky Winky of being gay and…become a hero to the right.
Medal of Freedom for Tomlinson?
I know I advoid barking moonbats…
nasty creatures.
Not just in a Paris Hilton kind of way, either.
Tinky Winky is gay, alphie. NTTAWWT. If more children’s show characters would come out of the closet, I’d be all for it. It would have made me a lot less creeped out by HR PufnSTFU.
<blockquote>Sure, he’s a barking moonbat. But so long as he stays on PBS, we can be assured that very few people will be watching – and at least 1/2 of the viewers know what the deal is with Moyers.
Amen brother, amne…..
PBS averages about twice as many viewers each night as Fox News…bad news for Condi’s guys if very few people are watching them.
That means PBS is averaging about five times as many viewers each night as CNN.
CNN lays a lot of cable for their readership, McGehee.
I mean beerviewership.
Liking PBS is one thing. Hounding someone for trying to even out its tax-funded programming a bit is another.
If there is ANY place for the Fairness Doctrine, it is on NPR and PBS. If we are going to fund such programming, the least they could do is try to better disguise the institutional biases.
I mean, have they no manners?
NPR and PBS are entirely different creatures, comparable only in that both share a liberal sensibility. Conflating the two works in the interest of the CPB plantation, since Big Bird and pals carry a hell of a lot of water for the hairy-legged face-for-radio dykes and their discordantly baritone eunuch attendants.
Who the fuck cares how many viewers fox has? That has nothing to do with the discussion at hand. But no matter what, if any question even tangetially related to the media is raised, up jumps some idiot with an inane and off-point observation about fox.
It appears that fox is more influential with lefty jagoffs than any other demographic.
You guys are bitching about this ? Try watching the CBC ( Canadian Broadcasting Corp. ) for ten minutes without puking your guts out .
I don’t have anything constructive to add to the conversation except I wanna repeat the phrase, “lefty jagoffs”.
There, I feel better.
Phil ,
CNN is cool with the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunication Commission ) . Fox is only available easily on satellite . News from the south is fine for mass consumption here as long as it’s as anti-American/anti-right as our own state sponsored left wing bullshit , see above comment in regard to CBC .
I used to like Moyers back in the days of the Campbell interviews, treacly as they were. Then I got to experience some of his “reporting” first-hand in a medium-sized town I was living in in Alabama in the early 1980s and I realized what a dishonest axe-grinding fuck Moyers really is. Every word of his show was a lie, including “and” and “the.”
Moyers and his son have made a shit-pile off ‘his’ show. Moyers would be nobody if we, the taxpayers, hadn’t carried his water for years.
Paying his production company (his son) 400K for a ‘Bill Moyers Special’ on top of actual production costs. Please. ‘Public Television’? Not even close.
I don’t have a problem with buck-toothed nuns talking about art, The Met, or the Sixty-Seventh Annual Little Miss Cross-Eyed Hickiod Beauty Pageant.
But pompous morons administering Truth to frothy Upper-West Side fucktards – I don’t want to pay for it.
Not one dime.
Hey! If Hillary is elected will she put Moyers back in charge of IRS harassment of her enemies, the way LBJ did?
And speaking of Tinky Winky… did anybody but me ever watch in fascinated horror as Tinky Winky got his butt tickled by Dipsy (the yellow one, with the good moves) holding a gigantic feather? Then reciprocated? IIRC, it was in the same episode as the real-children segment showing a preschool class or something shaking their booties. I wish like heck I could remember the song the children and their moms/caregivers were singing – it was, honest to God, along the lines of “Doing the Butt” – and for all that it was clearly an African-influenced dance, it still was an uncomfortable juxtaposition with the whole feather thing.
I have no issue with gay intimacy that I don’t have with straight intimacy: I don’t think that either ought to appear on a children’s show… and the feather thing was just awfully questionable. (The reader should understand that “intimacy” is a euphemism. I’m not talking about holding hands or hugging.)
TW: Oh, come on. since69?
I’m so sorry, Dipsy is the green one with the good moves. It’s been a few years!
I’m not exactly paying for the privilege of watching Fox News either with my tax dollars, but with PBS and NPR, I have no choice. You DO understand that right?
No, he doesn’t. Whatsoever. On the other hand, you can always go up to him and shout “Fox News! Oogaboogabooga!” and see him hold up his carved icon of Obama to ward off the evil.
Regarding the unspeakable Mr. Moyers, this article has helped me make a decision. I am going to increase my pre-tax withholding on both my 401(k) and my Medical FSA, pronto. The money could have come in handy now, but I’ll feel better reducing the level of my taxable income that could go towards paying for these anuses.