The vital myth of public broadcasting.

Whether you watch or listen to it or not, you're the public in public broadcasting. Evenry time I hear one of their pledge drives it makes me wonder why I should be such a snob that I don't want to take money from capitalism. It's a huge business, still trying to tell us that it's not really based on capitalism. Where does it think its money comes from originally. If they get grants from the Ford or Rockefeller or Pew trusts and foundations, it came from capitalism. But by giving them donations, we can pretend smugly that this programming is unsullied by - ugh - business.

It's also unsullied by anything not liberal, as the fight over adding conservative programming illustrates.

Here's what I mean:

"That is public broadcasting's role, or at least that's the role we take on ourselves," Greeley said. "To take this unbelievable volume of information, some of it fascinating, and figure out how to add to it the values of public radio, which are sourcing, finding a narrative and figuring out how to present it to people in a way that they retain it and also know where it came from."

Even with 18,000 of the elite, it's still an oligarchy, promising to "figure out" how to combine it with their elite liberal values and feed it to the ignorant masses, who after all aren't up to the job of figuring out what they should listen to or watch on their own. Those "values of public radio" aren't necessarily the public's values, but that doesn't seem to have occurred to Mr. Greeley.

Their idea of "Public" is different from mine. They keep telling us that their programming wouldn't be on the air if we don't contribute to broadcasting it. If they need contributions, why not put it on a subscription basis on Sirius or DirecTV? Because then it would no longer serve its purpose of indoctrination.