I think we're about to get to the bottom of this.
I mean the reason Limbaugh dittoheads in and out of Congress can't
stand PBS.
I've never been convinced by the reasons they gave before. PBS is an
elitist playpen for the rich? Why would that bother people who generally
favor making the whole country a playpen for the rich?
Or cost? Congress proposes a $63 million tax break for Rupert
Murdoch, but balks at $1.09 per person per year in tax money for PBS?
Or the most picturesque objection of all—the one from Rev. Joseph R.
Chambers of Paw Creek Ministries in North Carolina. He warns us that
the PBS kid show, "Barney," is straight out of "the world of demons and
devils," further evidence that "America is under siege from the powers of
darkness." That explains why North Carolina keeps re-electing Jesse
Helms to the Senate.
But we got down to the hard core last week in Mona Charon's
Sunday column. The really serious deep-down gut reason dittoheads can't
stand PBS is that "Barney" and other kid shows are shot through with
"political correctness."
"Political correctness" has become the most vile phrase a dittohead
can utter, having replaced "dirty rotten pinko commie anti-gun bleeding
heart" as Most Cutting Epithet by a unanimous vote of the 1994 National
Dittohead Convention.
PC, once a useful term that meant something fairly specific, now is a
catch-all label for anything dittoheads feel passionately negative about.
Wayne Booth, professor emeritus of English at the University of Chicago,
says PC almost always is used now to mock one or more of the following:
"(1) decency; (2) legality; (3) moral or ethical standards; (4) justice,
fairness, equality of opportunity; (5) tact, courtesy, concern about hurting
people's feelings unnecessarily; (6) generosity; (7)kindness; (8) courage in
defending the underdog; (9) anti-bigotry; (10) anti-racism; (11) anti-anti-
Semitism; (12) anti-fascism; (13) anti-sexism; (14) refusal to kneel to
Mammon; (15) sympathetic support for the jobless, the homeless, the
impoverished, or the abused; (16) preservation of an environment in which
human life might survive; (17) openness to the possibility that certain right-
wing dogmas just might be erroneous."
That brings us back to Mona Charon.
She says PBS kid shows are "cultural propaganda" attempting "to
push an agenda at those impressionable little minds."
I suppose any TV show has a "cultural propaganda" agenda if you
define the term broadly enough. The question is whether Barney's agenda
is a good one.
Ms. Charon thinks it's a bad one because it's soft on divorce. She
points to a Barney song that goes like this:
"I know a boy named Tim who lives with his mom./His dad lives far
away./And though he sees his parents just one at a time,/They both love
him every day." The refrain concludes that all families differ, "But mine's
just right for me."
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The Truth, Mainly
She says that's part of the disagreeably tolerant notion that "TV owes
it to [kids of divorced parents] to make them feel 'normal' and loved and
accepted," but all it really does is "to assuage the guilt of parents."
Assuaging guilt may be politically correct too.
Ms. Charon also dislikes the Sesame Street song "We All Sing With
the Same Voice," calling it "one of those feel-good universalist themes that
pockmark the program."
In the spirit of reconciliation between those who think divorcees
should wallow in guilt and those who think little kids should be made to
feel good ("normal," loved, and accepted), I offer a modest proposal: What
we need is not less public TV, but more. Not just PBS, but a parallel
network we'd call NEWTV.
It would be full of kid shows from Dittoland—and all of them shot
through with Dittoland's own peculiar brand of political correctness.
Barney would still be there, but on NEWTV he'd sing sterner songs
about kids from troubled families: "Hurry, hurry, drive the fire
truck./Hurry, hurry, drive the fire truck,/Hurry, hurry, drive the fire
truck./Papa chased Mama up a tree."
The new Barney theme song would be "I smack you,/You smack
me./We're a dysfunctional fam-i-lee."
Sesame Street on NEWTV would show three little kids of European
descent sitting around one whose people come from one of the other
continents, and they'd ask the viewer "Which one of these things doesn't
belong?"
And the NEWTV Mr. Rogers would sing "It's a beautiful day in the
neighborhood,/So long as you're the right neighbor./Could you get out of
here?/Would you stay out of here?/Don't you be my neighbor."
After a year of PBS and NEWTV going head to head, we could
choose between the two brands of political correctness. Those who prefer
the Dittoland version could vote to re-elect the dittohead freshman
congressmen. Those who prefer the PBS version could vote for the
challengers.
And we'd lower the voting age to six months.
We'd have fun, boys and girls. Can you say "political correctness
plebiscite"?
Satterfield is a college professor and writes as a means of discovery.
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