Burn of the Day
- Donald R. McClarey
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 43 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
“News deserts”. Is there any turn of phrase they won’t use to satisfy their mindless demagoguery?
Oh noes! I will just DIE without Maryland Public Television and its endless beg-a-thons! For just 390 bucks I can get that cheap DVD of the Chesapeake Bay flyover. What a steal! I’m so happy Ken Burns is looking out for us non-city folk.
Too much?
It’s rich that a guy that got wealthy by being a PBS producer would fuss about PBS being canceled. Hey Ken! Go find someone else to underwrite it or do it yourself like many people do nowadays.
Burns is being deceptive and fancies his audience consists of idiots.
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Public television has been the avenue of some quality programming over the year, some amusing and eccentric programming, and programming developed abroad. (The children’s programming in my era was largely dreck and I imagine still is). The problem with their documentary programming has always been that every production could have been derived from a precis composed by Arthur Schlesinger, Ralph Nader, Seymour Hersch, or some twit from the Sierra Club. I think Robert MacNeill and Jim Lehrer tried to be impartial, but National Public Radio never made the attempt. (Their board had the audacity to hire George McGovern’s former campaign manager as the organization’s president in 1977). Still, you could derive benefit from listening to NPR as late as 2003. See Uri Berliner on what happened to the organization in later years, and what it was at the time he left it.
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The thing is, gliberals and leftoids fancy public institutions and the public square are their property and that all institutions should be devoted to serving their goals (hence the ruin of the professional associations and higher education). The rest of us have not developed systematized ways of identifying malignant characters and pushing them out.
Maybe if Ken sticks around long enough he can chronicle the next civil war brought about by the careless left who see communism as gift for America.
And the only stuff worth watching – All Creatures Great and Small – you can only stream and you have to pay!!! I might as well sign up for Acorn etc
I hate that you have to pay, ontop of the huge taxes you pay, for television programs. Some things should be included in your taxes. TV has historically been one of them.
The problem isn’t the free to air television, it’s the woke slant the free to air television decided to take in essence shunning half the population who don’t agree with the politics being peddled but yet are still paying for it…through their taxes. Government funded tv should represent all citizens. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) suffers from the same problem. To the point where we, on this side of politics, have dubbed if gAyBC.
Exactly.
Celebrities such as Ken Burns and others need to wrap their heads around the fact that no one cares about their politics and that we do not appreciate being manipulated.
I am the first to admit I am a *great* fan of his work in “The Civil War” and other wonderful documentaries he produced. He truly has exceptional talent, and I am so glad he channeled it into worthy projects,
But he needs to know that people who live in rural areas of America are far from isolated. They do not live in tar paper shacks without contact with the outside world. They have radio, cable TV, and the internet and use them all to keep up with everything going on in the world, just as we who live in urban areas do. They also vote and are largely conservative Republicans. I know because my husband and in-laws are from rural NW Ohio farm country. They do not appreciate being talked down to and condescended to, nor to be caricatured as country bumpkins.
Ken Burns and other celebrities with agendas do not speak for them.