Kill Big Bird?
Why the hell not?
Team Obama, desperate to salvage something from Wednesday’s debate debacle, seized on Mitt Romney’s call to end PBS’ taxpayer subsidy.
It was — horrors! — a gaffe.
Nonsense.
“I like PBS,” Romney said. “I love Big Bird. But I’m not going to . . . borrow money from China to pay for [it.]”
Gaffe? No way.
Romney’s not out to drive Big Bird off the air. He just doesn’t think that he rates a Washington subsidy — and he’s not alone.
President Obama’s own Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction commission calls for ending PBS’ subsidy — some $280 million — outright. And for good reason.
Big Bird
PBS is now home to numerous lucrative franchises — with “Sesame Street” the most successful, having earned $211 million in merchandising sales from 2003 to 2006.
Indeed, Sesame Workshop’s total assets at the end of last year stood at more than $411 million — and its CEO is paid nearly $1 million a year.
Which certainly makes Big Bird a 1-percenter, earning far more than Mitt Romney — and paying far less in taxes, to boot.
Now, when the Corporation for Public Broadcasing was set up, there was little in the way of educational TV; indeed, all broadcast options were limited.
That’s hardly true in the Information Age, where education outlets are limitless — and well-funded.
PBS contends that Romney “does not understand the value that the American people place on public broadcasting.”
Actually, he does — which is why he figures they’ll voluntarily support it through charitable donations, as many do.
(And by the way, the Obama White House yesterday refused to say if it will preserve tax deductions for all those contributions to “your local PBS station.”)
Big Bird, in short, is doing just fine. But in an era of a $16 trillion-plus national debt, he can pay his own way.
Mark Steyn skewers the BIrd here:
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