Sometimes the recipe for a political story writes itself without the slightest dash of snark or humor needed.
For years Republicans have made it a cultural talking point to discuss cutting funding to the National Endowment of the Arts and Public Broadcasting (known to most of the latte’ drinking crowd as NPR, PBS etc.). Usually these attempts to gut public programming have failed even though there have been some close calls over the years.
Romney, in his inimitable skill of finding a flip-floppery way to answer any question, has managed to find a middle road on the whole cut-public-broadcasting-and-those-liberals-on-NPR meme.
Advertising on Sesame Street.
When asked about how he would change funding for PBS and other government sponsored media programs the former Massachusetts governor said:
“We’re not going to kill Big Bird,” Romney said. “Big Bird’s going to have advertisements, alright?”:
Look, I understand Romney’s point about the United States having to re-evaluate programs that are ‘non-essential,’ but in public programming advertising is not the way to go. Do we really want to see Bert and Ernie arguing over how to arrange the new chairs they bought from IKEA? Or worse: Mr. Hooper’s store get bought out by Safeway? Besides why does Romney have to be so hostile towards the heart of Sesame Street anyway, isn’t that where he got his start?
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
