----------------------------Original message---------------------------- 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