Good is bad, bad is good; Big Bird and Big Brother

Last month, Mark Felt, former Assistant Director of the FBI admitted to being “Deepthroat,” the high-level Justice Department official who was the secret background source for the Watergate stories in the Washington Post in the early 1970’s that eventually pressured President Richard Nixon to resign.

Nixon didn’t just want to win re-election in 1972, this time he wanted to win big, so that he could claim a mandate.

Burglars broke into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate office building in order to know the Democrats' strategies. They wanted to plant bugs, and they wanted to dig up dirt on the Democratic candidates in order to discredit them.

Thanks to the Post’s investigative reporting by Carl Bernstien and Bob Woodward, was only part of a much bigger campaign of intimidation, corruption, and “dirty tricks.”

Nixon seemed to have thought that because he was the President, he was somehow “above the law.” But the whole point of the United States is to be a governed not by men or political parties, but by laws and regulations.

Felt (Deepthroat) should’ve been lauded as a hero, but instead the mainstream media (not just Fox News, mind you, but all the networks and CNN) brought out all the President’s men instead, who proceeded to slander Felt’s character as someone who broke the law and violated the trust of his superiors.

Hello? Who broke the law? Who violated the trust of the American people? Chief among these Nixon defenders was Charles Colson. Colson is now a Conservative-Christian pundit who founded a prison fellowship ministry, but for Colson to portray Felt as some kind of sinner is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

I think that instead of the “love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you…turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give them the shirt off your back (Matthew 5)” theology of Jesus and ‘the Bible,’ Colson subscribes more to the “the ends justifies the means” doctrine of Machiavelli’s ‘the Prince.’ Nixon’s followers believed that they were the only people morally qualified to control the country, therefore it didn’t matter what they did to guarantee that they remained in power.

Things haven’t changed much in thirty years. Last week the Republican controlled Congress decided to cut funding for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) by 46%. That means that “Sesame Street” may be on the chopping block. Some PBS stations won’t be able to offer local programming, like the “Market to Market” and Iowa State Fair coverage we enjoy on IPTV, a few stations may shut down entirely.

Why? Because some Republicans don’t like it when PBS and NPR news programs fail to report on Bush policies in the most favorable light possible. Public broadcasting was created to be an objective, independent agency that is free both from political pressures and from commercial pressures of ratings. There motto used to be “If public television doesn’t do it, who will?”
Like Woodward and Bernstien at the Post, public tv and radio should take a skeptical and challenging position toward any administration, Republican or Democrat. That’s what a free press is for.

But first Bush made Kenneth Tomlinson chairman of the CPB, a man who spent $10,000 to scrutinize the content of “Now,” a PBS news magazine hosted by Bill Moyers, because he didn’t think Moyers was “Fair and balanced” enough. Of course, to Tomlinson (like for Sean Hanity and Rush Limbaugh) “fair and balanced” means biased in favor of the Bush Whitehouse.
Tomlinson would’ve loved to make PBS stand for the “Propaganda Broadcasting System.” Who is Bush nominating to replace Tomlinson? Patricia de Stacy Harrison, a high ranking State Department official who’s a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Does that sound like someone objective? Unbiased? Fair? Balanced?

Besides, wouldn’t you think that the head of public broadcasting should be- oh I don’t know- someone with a background in television? Radio? Journalism? Education?

I honestly haven’t figured out if this is all part of the right-wing philosophy that wants to privatize any and all social programs so that all the Federal government is involved in is the military, or if it’s more sinister. An attempt to exert one-party control over every aspect of our culture- “total” control (as in “totalitarianism”).

Maybe I’m over-reacting here, but either way, but it seems like things we were always taught were good, right, and helpful: standing up for what’s right, reporting crime, freedom of the press, free speech, and public television are all things that are under attack by the very people who claim moral superiority.