What It Really Means To Fire Big Bird

The Public Broadcasting System (PBS) was conceived and born to bring knowledge and education to the citizens of the United States of America with no concessions to commercial viability. PBS is the alternative to the other media which bring us all the programming some business entity will pay for. Looking at the product that commercial media served up for our consumption, our elected officials, back in the day when elected officials served their constituents instead of corporations, decided to create PBS to be above the commercial fray and to deliver the needed information and educational programming to America's children and adults that would be free of the bias that requiring advertisers inherently creates. The Bank of America, for instance, is certainly not going to sign on to advertise on a program that specializes in financial shenanigan exposes. In fact, we've seen whole stories on banking irregularities goes strangely missing on all three major networks. It is precisely this monetary bias that PBS was created to avoid, for the sake and future of the American people. PBS programming has addressed the tough social issues well before commercial media even thought about it. I'm pretty sure Ernie is gay, and there's that Cow Pattie girl. Black friends of white kids in school, bullying, lessons on life for preschoolers and all sorts of things like that would never be covered by a media that has to prostitute itself to advertisers...too risky! But PBS was there for all those kids who faced the same problems and taught them to read and count and pass the GED at the same time. There are few things on this planet that deserve the support of all American citizens through their taxes than the Public Broadcasting System. And no character epitomizes the good that PBS does better than Big Bird. Will you stand with Big Bird or Mitt Romney? Republicans don't hate Big Bird because of the pittance in subsidies PBS receives. Republicans hate Big Bird because he(she?) speaks the truth and cannot be pressured by advertisers into misleading American children. So there! Steve Update: Rick Santorum puts his foot in it...

I’ve voted to kill Big Bird in the past. So I have a record there that I have to disclose. That doesn’t mean I don’t like Big Bird, I mean, you can kill things and still like them, maybe to eat them, I don’t know.