The Legal Reader^™

Kenneth Y. Tomlinson: My Invective and My Commentors' Rebutals

I've recently written a few rather "aggro" posts concerning CPB Chairman Kenneth Y. Tomlinson and his campaign to de-fund and Republicanize NPR and PBS. (As an example of "aggro," my first post about Tomlinson was entitled "Meet the New Asshole: Kenneth Y. Tomlinson".)

Today I received a couple of comments that I feel are worth responding to:

First, someone calling emself "Laughing At You" wrote:

He was appointed by Clinton, you morons!

That's true. President Clinton appointed Tomlinson to the Board of the CPB. That's a testament to Clinton's willingness to be fair and non-partisan, given that "[t]he CPB is a bipartisan agency designed to insulate public broadcasters from political pressure."

But it was President Bush who appointed Tomlinson Chairman of the CPB. And it is as Chairman under Bush that Tomlinson has sought to do precisely what his job is supposed to prevent: apply political pressure to public broadcasters. For example, Tomlinson paid $14,700 of CPB money on contracts he signed personally to an Indiana man named Fred Mann to report on whether Bill Moyers' reports were "pro-Bush" or "anti-Bush." That's not being non-partisan. That's applying political pressure -- again, precisely what the CPB is supposed to insulate against. You can't blame Bill Clinton's non-partisan appointment of Tomlinson as a member of the Board for Tomlinson's blatently partisan actions now. (Nice try, though . . . .)

My next commentor calls emself "pstarrr." Em wrote:

I've been listening to NPR since 1979 and I can attest that it is the pillar of liberal journalism. Although I appreciate the talented journalists (I'm a journalist too), the disdain it has for people like me - white, Christian, conservative - is crystal clear. It's about time someone questioned their tax-payer-paid agenda.

I've listened to NPR every day for at least twenty years, and I just can't accept pstarrr's statement. It's not true. PBS does not "disdain" people who are white, Christian and conservative.

I'll grant you this: If you believe that evolution is heresy; if you believe that creationism should be taught in public schools (and evolution not); if you believe that Christian prayer should be allowed (if not mandated) in public schools; if you believe that adolescents should be taught only abstinence and be taught that condoms and other forms of protection are bad: Then, yes. PBS and NPR probably "disdain" your views. So does every other mainstream news publication in the world. That's not because PBS, NPR and every other news organization is "liberal" and "disdainful" of you. It is because your views are radical and very far outside the mainstream.

I'm not denigrating those views. I know that many Americans hold them. And they have every right to do so. I'm thankful that the First Amendment absolutely protects their right not only to hold those views, but to advocate them.

But they don't have the right to use the government to try to impose those views on the rest of us. And the rest of us have a right (and a duty) to object when they try to do so.

That's why I called Tomlinson an asshole. Instead of doing his job -- which is supposed to be to see that nobody tries to impose his or her views on anyone else -- he's trying to use it to ensure that everyone espouses only the Bush Administration's views. That's wrong.

Posted by John at June 22, 2005 10:37 PM