Launch of Sesame Street Spaghetti Space Chase; Creator: Walter Lim; CC BY 2.0
The left had no sacred cow that was too sacred for Phyllis Schlafly to expose. From the Equal Rights Amendment to the abortion industry to nuclear disarmament, Phyllis laid waste to these institutions of leftist thought with more facts in fewer words than any other conservative in the movement. While Phyllis may have gone home to her heavenly reward, her razor-sharp arguments are as valid in today’s political climate as they ever have been.
When Elon Musk’s Twitter began labeling National Public Radio’s account as “state-affiliated media,” the publicly subsidized conglomerate criticized the move and stopped tweeting altogether. Twitter agreed to soften the language to “government funded media,” but NPR still wasn’t satisfied. As an article for the Babylon Bee smartly pointed out, National Public Radio essentially wanted to deny being national or public. They announced that they would no longer be using Twitter and encouraged users to seek them out on different channels. PBS ditched the social media platform in solidarity. Yet the fact remains that nothing is untruthful about NPR’s “government funded” label. NPR’s website openly says that “federal funding is essential” to what they do.
While NPR and PBS engages in hypocritical doublespeak about their funding, conservatives should be talking about pulling that funding altogether. Phyllis Schlafly called for NPR to be defunded decades ago. In a February 1995 column titled “Of Course, Congress Can Cut Spending!” Phyllis debunked the myth that federal funding is essential to what NPR and PBS does. She wrote, “The truth is that Big Bird isn’t in the slightest danger of having his wings clipped. Children’s Television Workshop, Inc., the producer of Sesame Street, makes almost a billion dollars a year in merchandising and related revenues, and pays its top executives over a half-million dollars a year.” Keep in mind that Phyllis wrote this three decades ago when half a million dollars was a lot of money.
Phyllis concluded, “Whatever rationale ever existed for taxpayer support of an educational television channel has now long since disappeared in the face of the variety of channels that thrive without taxpayer subsidies.” Phyllis was right. It’s time to ditch public funding for leftist media once and for all.
