This election has been about many things. It's been about jobs, tax policy, public debt, a sprinkling of foreign policy, and, occasionally, social issues like gay marriage, vaginal ultrasounds, and contraception.
But it's becoming clear that it is about principles in addition to policy. It's subtle, but it comes down to two different visions about the nature of America, its government, and its future.
We must decide, not once and for all, but as often as is necessary, as often as we are in danger of forgetting, what America really represents.
The battle for America's soul is cast as a false choice between equity and individualism. It really comes down to whether we care, and how much we care, about our fellow citizens, even if they are unknown to us.
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First, facts about the funding:
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives $445 million from the federal government. The 2012 federal budget is $2.469 trillion. This means the CPB represents 0.018 percent of the overall federal budget.
This is important, because, as we've seen from surveys, people often overestimate the share of the budget that goes to things like NASA. One survey suggests Americans think NASA takes up 24 percent of the budget, when it in fact receives around 1 percent.
Obviously, zeroing the federal funding for public television will not, in itself, do much for the deficit. Neil deGrasse Tyson puts it particularly well:
2. Federal money represents about 15 percent of the overall public television budget. The rest is made up by sponsorship from foundations and, as they famously say, "viewers like you". On the face of it, that doesn't sound like a lot. But it's unclear what restrictions are placed on both the public and private funds. Contributions and local sponsorship of specific stations might vary a lot -- KPCC in the greater Los Angeles area probably does better than a number of rural networks. Some organizations might target specific programmatic development, and not fund operations -- or vice versa. Some organizations insist on matching funds. So there is the potential for a 15 percent reduction to affect far more than 15 percent of the operations of PBS.
But the reason this battle is important is not the specific numbers involved with the funding. It has to do with what PBS represents. I'm going to focus just on the children's programming, though a spirited, solid defense can be made for the rest of it -- including the News Hour, which the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer, helped create so many years ago.
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Younger people might not know much about Mr. Rogers. He was the host of a long-running children's show on PBS called Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. It has been satirized, sometimes acutely, but always from a place of love and respect for the impact it's had on generations of Americans (and Canadians).
The funding issue reminds me of Mister (Fred) Rogers' testimony before the US Senate Subcommittee on Communications, in which he successfully argued against a proposed PBS budget cut by Nixon. He did it by explaining, calmly, clearly, what he did, and why he did it. In short, he created a safe, educational environment for children, explaining calmly and carefully things about the world. He did this because he was worried about commercial programming for children, and what it could do to the emotional development of children.
(For those of you who don't know, Mr. Rogers had a background in child development and music composition, and was an ordained Presbyterian minister.)
Mister Rogers, more than Big Bird, embodied the spirit of PBS, especially its children's programming. It was only later, much later, that I realized he was talking to adults too.
An excerpt from a fantastic article that deserves to be read in full:
He is losing, of course. The revolution he started--a half hour a day, five days a week--it wasn't enough, it didn't spread, and so, forced to fight his battles alone, Mister Rogers is losing, as we all are losing. He is losing to it, to our twenty-four-hour-a-day pie fight, to the dizzying cut and the disorienting edit, to the message of fragmentation, to the flicker and pulse and shudder and strobe, to the constant, hivey drone of the electroculture … and yet still he fights, deathly afraid that the medium he chose is consuming the very things he tried to protect: childhood and silence. Yes, at seventy years old and 143 pounds, Mister Rogers still fights, and indeed, early this year, when television handed him its highest honor, he responded by telling television--gently, of course--to just shut up for once, and television listened. He had already won his third Daytime Emmy, and now he went onstage to accept Emmy's Lifetime Achievement Award, and there, in front of all the soap-opera stars and talk-show sinceratrons, in front of all the jutting man-tanned jaws and jutting saltwater bosoms, he made his small bow and said into the microphone, "All of us have special ones who have loved us into being. Would you just take, along with me, ten seconds to think of the people who have helped you become who you are ... Ten seconds of silence." And then he lifted his wrist, and looked at the audience, and looked at his watch, and said softly, "I'll watch the time," and there was, at first, a small whoop from the crowd, a giddy, strangled hiccup of laughter, as people realized that he wasn't kidding, that Mister Rogers was not some convenient eunuch but rather a man, an authority figure who actually expected them to do what he asked … and so they did. One second, two seconds, three seconds … and now the jaws clenched, and the bosoms heaved, and the mascara ran, and the tears fell upon the beglittered gathering like rain leaking down a crystal chandelier, and Mister Rogers finally looked up from his watch and said, "May God be with you" to all his vanquished children.
Seriously, read the whole thing.
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PBS in general, and its children's programming in particular, serves the needs of educational and emotional development of children without being bombarded by commercial messages.
It is especially important for kids who don't have a fully developed social support network.
I came from a loving family. But I spent a lot of time with grandparents who didn't speak English while my mother was at work. I watched a lot of TV. In retrospect, watching All in the Family when I was three years old was probably not good for me. (I remember writing, "Why is Orchie [sic] Bunker so mad?" on a letter to my grandpa.) But I did watch Mr. Rogers, and Sesame Street, and it helped me with my language development.
So PBS isn't for the kids privileged with wealth and attention and top-notch early childhood education. It's for the rest of us. It's for those of us whose parents, bless their hearts, needed the TV as a babysitter occasionally, but were concerned about the epileptic-inducing nature of Power Rangers and similar shows. It was for those of us who grew up around non-English speakers. It was for those of us who didn't have anyone to talk to us about divorce, or Desert Storm, or about anger -- all of which Mr. Rogers did.
PBS is for the rest of us, for all of us. It's not enough--no television program could replace parenting, in-person education, and hugs. But it helped, especially when it brought kids and adults into the same room, the same emotional space, and helped adults to actually talk with their children.
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There's a difference between asking for shared sacrifice and cutting a budget completely. If it were about the deficit, then I think Mitt Romney would have used PBS as an example of something we all value, but also something that will need to be cut somewhat in order to ensure a firm financial footing for the children in question.
He didn't do that. He made a joke, a joke to the face of a man employed by that network for decades, a joke at a member of an iconic show, Sesame Street, with twenty different versions around the world. In particular, a version for Palestinian children, Sharaa Simsim, has already been the victim of politics. In early 2012, it was defunded after the US Congress suspended Palestinian aid after Palestine's appeal to the UN for statehood. (The funding was later reinstated by Congress, with restrictions, but the restrictions were overridden by the President.)
It was a joke because he doesn't get how important it is to families not like his -- flawed families, with flawed parents, where TV is on more than it should be, but where it can be a source of learning and even healing. That's what Mr. Rogers saw, and Mr. Romney does not. It's about families that may or may not be like ours, children who may not be ours, but belong to us -- and we to them -- all the same.
Why should I try to say it in words, when Mr. Rogers did it for me?
We live in a world in which we need to share responsibility. It's easy to say 'It's not my child, not my community, not my world, not my problem.' Then there are those who see the need and respond. I consider those people my heroes."
Sesame Street, you're my hero. Fred Rogers, you're my hero. You have helped me develop into a person who, however imperfectly, believes that liberty and responsibility are partners, not antagonists, in the building of a more perfect union. And it is that partnership, with all its tensions, that is the soul of America.
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