Public Television, Radio Funding

Re the Senate flap over CPB funding. How can one get to the root of the matter when both sides are playing to the cameras? Instead of illuminating the issues with real debate, they are manipulating rhetoric to make the deepest impression on the folks at home.

For instance: “Sesame Street.” Partisans conjure the image of Big Bird, starving and cold, begging for scraps at a Skid Row soup kitchen. Detractors want us to think Big Bird, vacationing in Hawaii with three female thrushes, is spending ill-gotten gains from CPB largess and the millions from his merchandising.

The essential question then to be addressed is: Does such bias really exist? Someone, such as myself, who has lived and worked in Europe will not believe that it does. I recall in interviewing historian and political scientist Francois Furet, the man largely responsible for driving the Marxist interpretation of history out of academic fashion, that I asked him to compare the American left and the French left. He responded, “What American left?” By world standards, all major players in the U.S. look conservative.

YURI RASOVSKY, Los Angeles