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Ali-Radicali — Sesame Street vs Romney
Published: 2012-10-08 15:32:47 +0000 UTC; Views: 2657; Favourites: 52; Downloads: 30
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So umm yeah, in case you hadn't heard yet, Mitt Romney thinks Sesame Street needs to go because it's waste of money. However, he's willing to implement tax reforms that would save billionnaires like Sheldon Adelson billions of tax dollars.I for one, think Mitt Romney might have benefited from a bit MORE sesame street. Clearly he has a thing or two to learn from the count about counting and arithmatic.
Made using the gimp.
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Comments: 113
There's a lot more on PBS besides Sesame Street. There's Antiques Roadshow, Victoria, NOVA, MotorWeek, This Old House, and Nature. If your goal is to keep PBS on the air, don't put all your eggs in one basket. I say that because while Sesame Street has its devoted fans, there are a lot of people who see Sesame Street as just a stupid puppet show for babies.
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Love this! I firmly believe Romney's war on Big Bird helped him lose the election. He just looked such a tool after he said he'd fire Big Bird. And we all noticed! Here's to PBS sticking around and educating children for many years to come!
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I honestly don't think it really mattered, I don't think the race was ever close. All throughout the summer, Obama had a huge lead and Mitt was making one gaffe after the other. Then at the first debate (which I wouldn't have called a victory for either participant, but whatever) the media and the rightwing echochamber all started chanting that Romney had won the debate and the race was now going to be close..... which ended up with them denying the poll results up until the last minute, when it was clear that Obama had won a dicisive victory, just like the polls had said all along.
I don't think any single gaffe or awkward turn of phrase lost Romney the election. The 47% comment hurt, but even that wasn't decisive IMO. If you ask me, this election was about the US public rejecting the republican platform on a broad range of issues: the economy, women's rights, better conditions for minorities and immigrants, civil liberties and foreign policy.
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I agree that the election was the people rejecting the republican economic and of course social policies. But after the Big Bird comment I was surprised at how many non-political people I knew became engaged. People I never thought cared about politics heard that comment or heard of it and I think it really stuck with them. Because even if you attack people head-on by calling them moochers in that 47% comment, people ignore it. They detach themselves. It's much harder to remain detached after someone attacks a part of your childhood and a symbol of your innocence. It might have only been a single piece of Romney's downfall, but it was an influential one.
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Meh, PBS has been a Liberal podium for decades with educational stuff mixed in. Government funding shouldn't be funding political groups unevenly.
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Except that the CPB, which funds PBS, has a bipartisan directorate in place that actually takes this criticism very seriously when hiring new members. No party can have more than 5 of the 9 possible seats. Members are fired if they seem to be overtly partisan: [link]
"Liberal media" is a tired canard and hollow complaint, something which keeps getting mentioned but is never substantiated. If you think "sharing is caring" is "too liberal" for children's television, I think you're too poisoned by antisocial political dogma to be a decent parent or member of society.
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The problem with Bi-partisanship is that their are at least 4 parties.
There is nothing wrong with sharing as long as it isn't in the form a tax. Then it's just stealing.
Calling the media Liberal is like calling water wet. If you are a fish you'll never understand what it means when someone calls water wet. Likewise, if you are deeply liberal you'll never understand how liberal the media is no mater how it's explained. If you consider Romney to be a radical right wing guy instead of a Democrat with a Republican hat, then you are that fish, and you'll never understand any explanation anyone gives you.
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Except that the US has a voting system that inevitably leads to two parties vying for power.
Should government exist? If yes, how should it get the money for the things it does?
Tax = theft is a moronic statement since the only logical conclusion to draw from that proposal is that government shouldn't exist of should be self-funded (I.E. a (for profit)business).
If you think Obama is a leftie, you're living in wonky US rightwingtopia. If you think Romney is a democrat, you're only correct insofar as most of the democrats are actually centrists in diguise. Romney is an ideologue who'll say whatever his constituents want him to say before doing the same old failed right wing shenanigans they all do: cut taxes & watch the infrastructure go to shit.
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haha. Well done. You've tied together the different threads of the argument really well.
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Thanks, although I owe Romney some credit for making it so damn easy.
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But which Romney are you talking about? I can't keep track of them all. He's like that He-Man character with the rotating faces - Man-E-Faces.
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Well, I'd have to thank conservative Mitt. Moderate Mitt and Liberal Mitt would probably also defund PBS, but they aren't as honest or brazen about it. (Did I just call Mitt honest? Funny how you can only apply that word to him when comparing his personas to one another.)
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haha. Well when there is more than one "individual", you can use the word "honesty" in comparatively.
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hilarious!!
whether you support Obama, or Romney, or if you don't give a shit, your last panel is just sooooooooo cool
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Why do I get the feeling Romney said that Sesame Street government funding needs to go, NOT Sesame Street needs to go? They're not one and the same, and as many have already stated, people already donate to PBS (that's why it has those fundraisers every year), so that government money could go to a more useful place like our actual education. PBS is simply icing on the cake.
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The amount of funds going to PBS is absolutely insiginifcant to the total US budget, a pithy 22.3 million on a 3.8 trillion dollar budget. That's 0.0005875% of the budget. In neil deGrasse Tyson's words, trying to fix the budget by cutting PBS is like trying to clean your harddrive by deleting .txt files.
In return for government funding, the government get to exert a certain amount of control over PBS programming. Why do you think Sesame Street has managed to maintain certain quality standards in the mess that is corporate broadcasting?
[link]
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Corruption follows money, and the government is not excluded from that statement. All of the decimal percentages add up. You don't need the government to maintain quality standards. People can think for themselves and make judgments on their own regarding how to improve on quality TV shows. You also have bad apples of course, but maybe that's one way of being told, "Go read a book!"
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Government is corruptable, which is a VERY BAD ARGMENT for giving the corrupting agents (I.E. businesses) complete freedom and monopoly.
The Romney Ryan plan, despite not being specific at all, promises not to touch social security, medicare/medicaid (for cureent recipients) and defense.
That means 72% of the 3.6 trillion dollar budget is NON-NEGOTIABLE. Do you really, really, really think that these guys are going to be able to afford 5 trillion dollars in tax cuts by making (drastic) cuts to the 28% of the $3.6T budget that they've deemed fair game? REALLY?
Just to put things into perspective: Ryan's plans would cut discretionary spending down 0.75% of GDP. Currently it's 4.5%. Veteran's pay, which is currently 1% of GDP, wouldn't even be fully covered if it were the ONLY source of discretionary spending.
People can make decisions, but if the choice is between shit and crap, it's a pretty bad choice. If you compare US broadcasting with some public braoadcasting stations, you see staggering differences. Sure, in terms of spectacle, in terms of big expensive thrills, US television knows its stuff, but when it comes to investigative journalism, educational programming and meritworthy documentaries, you have to go across the atlantic to the BBC, ZDF or ARTE to find them. By giving capitalism free reign over TV, you've made profitabilty/popularity more important than quality. I think there's a palce for both, and that's why I think it's important to have state-subsidised tv alongside commercial stations. A balance of power, if you will.
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I'm not saying throw away all the rules for keeping capitalism in its place. Never said that, nor do I believe it. You're going to have corruption no matter how many government regulations they throw at us, but it gets to the point where the regulations overwhelm the good businesses and they never grow.
You have a choice in where your money goes (except taxes). If you think a business is double crossing you or you don't like where they put their money (like Chick-Fila), you can go elsewhere and it will catch on with word of mouth. People have that power. With the government, you have no choice. No power (except voting, and look who they keep putting in our faces to elect). You either do what they say, or go to jail.
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The reason businesses don't grow in the US is because they can't compete with the very largest companies, who exploit their hundreds of thousands of low-level employees and pay reduced taxes (if any). A more balanced tax code would make smaller local businesses more competitive and would make it more profitable to employ/invest more instead of draining off the profits.
But government IS accountable. You elect representatives to represent you, you can petition them to do a better job, and if they don't you can vote for someone else. You have no way to force a company to change its policies other than trying to boycott it(which requires that the company's services are either non-essential or that there are competitors). The fact that you feel companies are more accountable than government tells me more about the sad, sad state of US politics than it tells me about any inherent evil nature of government.
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All the things you've said about government accountability also apply to private businesses. You can petition, you can make suggestions, you can complain, etc. Sometimes it's effective and sometimes it's not (just like the government). You can sponsor businesses to help represent you as well. And of course the more popular businesses are harder to take down if they're corrupt, just like corrupt politicians are harder to take down. That's not a capitalist thing, that's in everything.
I'm just saying that the government has more power than even the larger businesses (many of which are controlled by the government and use its "politically correct" regulations to take advantage of smaller businesses). I'm not denying the business corruption you've witnessed in your personal life, just like you can't deny the government's power over businesses I've witnessed. We both agree it happens on both sides. Just keep your trusted government in check every now and then, and I'll look on the brighter side of what the government's doing right.
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If a company is doing something you don't agree with, you have no authority to do something about it unless they're breaking the law. Government is supposed to be representing the people, and while I understand that the US government is particularly bad at that, you have a shitty electoral system and bad political financing laws to thank for that, not the concept of government itself.
Ultimately, the government is the only authority that can forcefully prevent a corporation from doing harmful things, so it'd be nice if the government wasn't sponsored and endorsed by corporate america.
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Very well done, actually informative as so few things are.
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Thanks. I chose this issue, not just because it resonates with people, but also because it illustrates perfectly (with specific numbers!) how crazy these conservative proposals are. They gut social programs that are doing a terrific job on a very small budget, in order to pay for (a portion of) massive, unaffordable tax cuts for the wealthy.
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1) Sesame Workshop is part of 1%-
[link]
2) Sesame Workshop has demanded Obama to pull a Big Bird vs. Mitt ad-
[link]
3) Even if Sesame Street stopped airing on PBS because of 'lack of government funds' there are plenty of other stations that would be more than happy to pick up the show.
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1) relevance? They get most of their money from business they do, only 22.3 million state dollars go to PBS each year.
2) PBS is supposed to remain non-partisan, so of course they have to demand the removal of an obama ad featuring big bird. Failure to do so would only have fueled the fires by giving the right an excuse to claim partisan bias on the part of sesame street.
3) I could go into great lengths on the merits of government oversight, but I think a picture can accurately rebut this argument:
[link]
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1) Relevance? Did you not see the chart of how much money they make yearly compared to other programs that don't get federal funding of some kind?
2) About pulling the ad. It ain't happening-
[link]
And the day PBS is 'non-partisan' is the day I flap my arms real fast and start flying.
3) What, people turn into Muppets?
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1) No I haven't, but I can tell you right now that would be a deceptive and dumb-ass chart to make. Why? because most programs don't receive any federal funding and don't have to.
Sesame street doesn't receive funding because it would die without it, at this point they could live quite lavishly off their profits without federal funding. The reason the governemtn still funds them however, is because that allows the governemnt to exert a certain amount of control over the programming: it allows the government to appoint the CEOs, it allows the government to give guidelines for content.
Sure, you could defund them, and then you'd end up with a big private company that can do whatever the fuck they want with their programming. If you think that wouldn't hurt the educational nature of their programming you must not watch a lot of TV.
2. I don't care TBFH. The ad is funny and tongue-in-cheek. Obama wasn't the one who politicised this by talking about defunding PBS, that was Romney, remember?
Again, we're talking about 0,000587% of the national budget, yet Romney felt the need to explicitly mention Big Bird. the ONE time he gives any specific ideas, he's dragging a nonpartisan government-endorsed company onto the national stage and esentially turrning it into a national referendum on sesame street, lol.
I don't get where this ridiculous republican notion of muppet-bias is coming from. Honestly, I get the impression that projection is the only kind of thinking republicans are still capable of. I mean, you're the folks who are represented by FOX news, yet it's the "liberal media" who are biased. Is everything that isn't abundantly pro-republican democratic by fiat?
Is it like courthouses and ten-commandments-monuments? Is every courthouse without a pro-god monument an atheist courthouse? Is every show without pro-republican bias part of the "liberal media conspiracy"???
3) No, it's an example of publicly funded TV versus reality TV, AKA the cancer that is taking network television to new lows.
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I love reading your PWNING arguments, especially how you handle moronic DA member's comments. XD
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Thanks. Yeah I like arguing and US politics interest me (in the same way you can't help but look at a tragic train wreck or car collision), so debating this stuff is kinda my thing. I'm just disappointed at the opposition to be honest. I mean I wasn't expecting great arguments, but I was expecting some clever economist to pop up at a cwertain point and try to argue with data, instead of all these emotionally loaded fox talking points.
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Gawd, I know EXACTLY how you feel, I always hope for something worthwhile and all I get is either some BAAAAAWING dumb-fuck, or some moron that tries to sound all smart and sophisticated, when anyone with half a brain-cell can find fifteen logistical fallacies in every single argument of his/hers.
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Yeah, that's basically the two flavours of comment you get: either the deranged nutball who thinks he's made a good argument when he uses every insult and derogatory term he can think of, and the guy who thinks of himself as the male version of Ayn Rand, the guy who has an expensive vocabulary and writes page-long paragraphs consisting of nothing but hollow phrases and ideological deepities.
Of the two I prefer the nutjobs though, it takes a lot less effort to dismess these. You can waste hourse trying to get the smartypants to commit to an actual argument, and then all you're left with is having won an argument on the internetz D:
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Yeah, nutjobs tend to be more fun anyways, just a few weeks ago I had an illiterate furry RAP a death-threat at me, and seeing as I was stoned as hell, I laughed my ass off and still managed to shut him down for good. FUNNIEST SHIT EVER.
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I care. The basic truth is that when your family doesnt have cable and your mom is always at work there are lessons you must learn that your friends just cant give you and the neighbors have forgoten. Knowledge you need, that overworked underpaid teachers cant take the time to show you one on one. All households cant afford computers. The 1% of our budget investment in public tv is like hiring an army of teachers and ettiquete instructors to show children manners, american ideals, and of course educational basics. PBSis an educational supplement that is really needed. The first time I heard classical music or saw a play was on PBS. The first black doctor I saw was on PBS I didnt know they existed. PBS changed my perspective on life beyond the view from my window. Thank you big bird.
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TV has a profound influence on education these days. For instance, here in the netherlands kids speak much better english than many other european countries, simply because american TV shows are subbed instead of dubbed.
If I recall correctly, a study showed that poor kids entering primary school knew 9 letters of the alphabet on average, as opposed to 20 for rich kids. That tells me that even at age 4-5, the rich kids already have a leg up. Resources like sesame street are vital to provide at least some semblance of balance to the playing field, and they save the education system work later on.
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Blah blah blah, whatever. Who really cares? This is a dumb issue that really is pointless in the grand scheme of things. I don't watch PBS anymore and I probably won't anytime soon. No point in paying for TV since there is never anything good on that can't be found on the interwebs (underemployed so no money to waste anyway) and if I ever do get the craving to watch Sesame Street in bulk, that's what "straight to DVD or VHS" is for. I don't want kids so that's not going to motivate me. And if PBS is doing so poorly that it intends to fail should we stop goverment funding them, then maybe it's their time to die. If people care so little about this station that they can't live without help, then they got nothing the people want and are just wasting airspace. Besides, if Sesame Street is so importent to everyone, it'll just go to a new home somewhere else. I used to get Sesame Street through a Canadian broadcasting as a kid so there are many options they can take.
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EDIT: just to preempt "but I'm not a republican"
The idea that cutting public funding for PBS will improve anything, be it PBS's broadcasting or the lives of the taxpayer is a republican talking point.
And to look at the programme's merit from the perspective of someone who doesn't use the service it provides is EXACTLY the way republicans have been framing this issue, and any other instance of public services, income redistribution, "socialism", etc.
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Throughout this post you've been arguing about Sesame Street's merit to you personally. That' is exactly the wrong mindset to take in this debate, unless you happen to be under 10 years old. Would it kill you to try to look at this issue from the perspective of a future inner city child, for example? It baffles me how republicans always manage to look at spending (that they don't agree with) from the perspective of people who don't directly benefit from it.
Clearly you've outgrown Sesame Street's target audience, and that's fine. Government spends money on all sorts of projects that target specific age groups and demographics. Why should a programme that targets young kids be treated as a "waste of money", just because the electorate has outgrown it?
PBS get the majority of its money on its own, it only receives 22.3 million from the state, which is 0,000587
% of the entire budget. PBS is not in financial trouble, it's not providing a piss-poor service, it's doing exactly what it's supposed to do for peanuts. The fact that they receive federal funding is great because it allows the government to have a say in the direction of PBS. It ensures that PBS remains nonpartisan and maintains certain standards.
Look at it this way: everything else on TV is already privately owned. Why would you want to force PBS to conform? Does it REALLY hurt the budget that much?
I see this as a giant red herring to distract from the fact that Romney has no credible mechanism to pay for his tax cuts. He can talk all he wants about being serious about the budget, so far we know he's giving 5 trillion in tax cuts and can't give any specifics how he's going to make up for the lost revenue. Closing vague, undefined tax loopholes isn't going to cut it, and neither is laying off or privatising big bird.
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Romney refers to America's increasing debt to China, and his example of what he would do to reduce it is cutting funding to PBS? That is not even a drop in the bucket. If the gov't reduced subsidies to corn farmers by 0.01%, you could cover all that 'costly' media funding and then some.
If he is serious about reducing people's dependence on the government, he should take the fight to the oil industry, the auto industry, the farmers, and the military (lazy 47 percenters). Welfare abusers are small change in comparison.
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The PBS comment was a joke, referring to the fact that the moderator spent most of his career at PBS. Romney by no means tried to claim that PBS was the entirety of his cost-saving cuts. PBS is just one of the many enterprises that should be competing on the free market without lingering on the public dole.
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No but Romney is deliberately noncommital as to how he WOULD reduce the deficit. Oh sure, he talks about tweaks to social security and medicare, but he has 5 trillion in tax breaks to account for and so far all he has proposed is closing "tax loopholes" (no specifics given) and ending PBS's public funding.
Now I want to ask you two fundamental questions:
Is it unfair to criticise Mitt Romney for the cuts he HAS committed to making, considering his extreme lack of specific proposals?
Do you really think removing PBS's 22 million dollar budget will have a meaningful positive impact on either the federal budget or the quality of PBS's services?
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Of course. But it's so much easier to scream about liberals wasting money than it is to address the problems in the budget in a serious manner.
It's all emotion based, there is no rationale behind the Romney Ryan tax plan. Romney wants to convince the world that government spending is bad (except when republicans are doing the spending) whilst trying to reassure us that tax cuts don't cost money :/
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If I allowed myself to headdesk, I would break my laptop. Epic fail on your part.
[link]
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Nothing said in this comic is factually in error. PBS only gets 22.3 million from the CPB, the rest of its income is from donations, advertising, merchandising, etc.
The idea that mitt romney is boldly changing policy when he's privatizing a minute and reasonably well-run public service is laughable.
But feel free to headbutt your desk, you might knock some sense into yourself.
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But Sesame Street isn't the only program PBS funds. It's just the most recognizable.
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PBS is educational and can be seen on both digital and analog.
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