(no subject)
Jan. 4th, 2012 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslutSo, Sesame Street and Romney. It's just so ridiculous and ignorant. "I'm not going to kill Big Bird! Big Bird will just have to have ads!"
There's something really ironic about forcing a show that originally conceived of inserting educational skits disguised as ads into its show to accommodate real advertising, but that's neither here nor there.
I feel seriously like I am preaching to the choir here, and it's such a transparent land grab that I hardly know what to say. On paper, it's a double-win for Republicans: score points in the culture wars, plus a big giveaway to corporations in the form of ad time to sell more sugary cereal and cheap plastic toys to a vulnerable audience. (Aside: we don't restrict screen time in my house, but we sure do restrict ad time...) Add the xenophobia of "borrowing from China" and they sweep the inning.
Except that he's not even asking to choose between, say, paying for pothole repair and paying for Sesame Street. He's just invoking "borrowing from China," as if lavish spending on public television got us into this economic mess. That takes a stretch of the imagination, doesn't it? The false austerity looks even more false -- I hope -- when you go after an institution that's been successful for 40 years, that's weathered previous culture-war budget cuts and found alternative revenue streams to keep its programming leaner, sleeker, but still top-notch.
It ends up looking spiteful.
Because it is.
There's something really ironic about forcing a show that originally conceived of inserting educational skits disguised as ads into its show to accommodate real advertising, but that's neither here nor there.
I feel seriously like I am preaching to the choir here, and it's such a transparent land grab that I hardly know what to say. On paper, it's a double-win for Republicans: score points in the culture wars, plus a big giveaway to corporations in the form of ad time to sell more sugary cereal and cheap plastic toys to a vulnerable audience. (Aside: we don't restrict screen time in my house, but we sure do restrict ad time...) Add the xenophobia of "borrowing from China" and they sweep the inning.
Except that he's not even asking to choose between, say, paying for pothole repair and paying for Sesame Street. He's just invoking "borrowing from China," as if lavish spending on public television got us into this economic mess. That takes a stretch of the imagination, doesn't it? The false austerity looks even more false -- I hope -- when you go after an institution that's been successful for 40 years, that's weathered previous culture-war budget cuts and found alternative revenue streams to keep its programming leaner, sleeker, but still top-notch.
It ends up looking spiteful.
Because it is.
