Posted on: Sunday, June 26, 2005

COMMENTARY
Making a case for PBS

By Dave Shiflett

Horrors! I just discovered my dear old mother is in sync with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

This startling revelation isn't from that lurid new book by Edward Klein. This is a case of strange political bedfellows created by threats to cut federal funding to PBS.

Sen. Clinton is a liberal from New York who opposed a proposed 45 percent cut in the PBS subsidy. The House on Thursday voted to rescind a proposed $100 million reduction in the subsidy, but other cuts remain possible.

My mother is a conservative from Virginia who voted for George W. Bush twice despite having three grandsons of draft age, reveres Bill O'Reilly and once refused to subscribe to the Washington Post lest a neighbor see it on her doorstep.

Yet like a lot of 70-somethings, my mom is devoted to PBS, where she finds programming she cannot get elsewhere on the ever-expanding television dial. "Keeping Up Appearances," a British sitcom, is a favorite. My dad, an 80-something World War II vet who would have drunk a quart of bleach before voting for John Kerry, is fond of "All Creatures Great and Small," a show about a British veterinarian.

I asked Mom about left-wing bias. Sure, she agreed, some shows appeal to liberals. When they come on she simply changes the channel, perhaps to see what O'Reilly is yakking about. Bottom line: There's simply too much good stuff on PBS to worry about political slant in some programs.

My parents aren't the only red-staters rising up to defend the besieged Public Broadcasting Service. Last week, my wife visited the hair salon, where a patron insisted that all present call their congressman to support PBS. And this was near Richmond, Va., where liberals are celebrated only when they appear on the obit page.

As a television reviewer who will never be mistaken for a liberal and as an acquaintance of Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and chief whip-cracker in this dispute, I must nonetheless join the chorus.

My reasons are entirely personal. PBS is, day in and day out, the best source of quality programming on television. There are other bright spots, including the National Geographic and Discovery channels, yet most of contemporary TV is like the behemoths regularly encountered on American beaches: big, ugly and getting more so every day. If PBS ever went under, I'd have to find a new gig.

I've got nothing against putting on a few more right- wingers if that will provide a sense of balance, though to my mind, political programming is dead air. Nor would I have any problem if Big Bird, who has somehow come to represent PBS, were sold in chains to Nickelodeon, and took Bert and Ernie with him.

Like many taxpayers, I turn to PBS for its unparalleled programming. Who else is going to fund projects such as Ken Burns' long and costly Civil War series? Even though some of us Southerners detected a bit of Yankee favoritism in his version of the story, nobody's perfect. All in all, it was great television, as were Burns' specials on baseball, jazz and the tragic boxer Jack Johnson.

I don't mind sending a few bucks to Washington to encourage more programs like that. PBS produces reliably good shows at a low public cost. As for charges of uniform left-wing bias, I beg to differ.

Consider "Rumsfeld's War," a recent PBS offering that was critical of the U.S. campaign in Iraq. Since conservatives and liberals alike are questioning the wisdom of our efforts to spread democracy in the Middle East through military means, it's hard to criticize the program as some lefty conspiracy.

Same thing with "The Soldier's Heart," a powerful look at the physical and mental toll suffered by the kids fighting that war. PBS didn't create those scarred and, in some cases, devastated veterans. I know a few of them myself.

And what about this week's "Declining by Degrees," which offers a devastating portrait of the decidedly liberal bastion of higher education? Let us hope this show will convince many parents they'd be better off spending their educational dollars on vocational school.

So, as Hillary might say, don't raze this PBS village. A lot of little old ladies like my mom are watching very closely, and you don't want to set them off. They can be a merciless bunch.

Dave Shiflett is a television critic for Bloomberg News Service.