We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Taking the Public Out of Public TV

from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

I am posting this only to illustrate how progressives-who-refuse-to-grow-up write on subjects such as PBS. I'd like to contrast this extremely bland report with one written over three years ago, and not from some rabble rousing fount of radical rhetoric, but from the Baltimore Chronicle

The latter does a much better job of understanding how a quasi-public broadcast service has devolved into serving the right-wing agenda of the Empire. Like all other important institutions, the ruling class knows how to control PBS in its interest which it does through appointments to their Board of Directors by the President and through money appropriated by Congress.