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In the interest of truth in packaging, it is worth noting that Lawrence

Jarvik was one of the people who testified at the House committee in opposition

to continuing the funding of PBS. To my knowledge, no pro-PBS media scholars

were asked or allowed to testify. I wonder, then, why, having had his

say to his buddies on the committee, he is so eager to shut down discussion

here. I would also like to hear Mr. Jarvik defend his position in this

context where it might be meaningfully challenged by others who might have

looked closely at public television.

  For myself, I claim no special expertise, and as a fan of popular television,

do find some of the arguments advanced for the specialness of PBS to be

more than a little elitist, to use a loaded term in this debate. On the

other hand, I was horrified, as someone who happened to be in DC and so

sat through the hearings, to see something defend the four networks as

providing sufficient diversity to satisfy any taste and then suggest that if

people want more they should rent videos (no doubt from Blockbuster, where

diversity'r'us) or watch cable. I call this the "Let Them Eat Cable" response

that seems typical of the current Congress. It's critics like this that are

making me a public ally of PBS!

  But, I would caution my academic friends -- if we get all worked up over

NEA or PBS or NEH, aren't we allowing ourselves to be distracted from the

key fights which involve the total restructuring of the government and the

end of wellfare as we know it. I worry a bit more about teen mothers who lack

a means to support their family than I do English professors at elite

 institutions  who have to look

elsewhere for grants. Newt has done a brillant job of creating a diversion

at the time when thinking leftists out to be engaged in the big fight.

   I wonder, however, if it isn't a miscalculation. PBS seems to me to be

one of the great middle class entitlement programs. If you ask the average

tax payer what they personally get of benefit from their government, many of

them would list PBS alongside the National Parks, the highways, national

defense, and public education. At a time when the two parties are courting

the middle class, it seems a misstep to talk of "zeroing out" PBS.

 

Now I've given everyone a reason to be irritated with me. I suppose it's time

to quit.

 

Henry Jenkins