Do You Watch PBS?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Six one seven two six six sixty eight sixty eight
is the number, Mike. I'm just curious, did you did
you get a cut of like Big Bird or Cookie
Monster or Elmo or Bert and Ernie that I that
I asked for maybe an hour ago, Mike, or he

(00:21):
says the song thank you, Mike, Alma song, Alma song. Sorry,
I thought maybe you're on strike today or something, Mike,
But thank you, Mike. Now, why am I you know,
playing cuts from Sesame Street? Is it? Jeff? Why are
you getting nostalgic for Sesame Street? Well, a little bit,

(00:44):
To be honest, my kids also grew up watching I
would say grow up, but they watched Sesame Street when
they were younger. Well, look, this is from Larry on Messenger,
and he makes an outstanding point. Really, I didn't even
think about it obviously, until he brought it up. Jeff,
let's not forget sir. You know, Larry, I don't know

(01:04):
why you keep calling me sir. That makes me very nervous.
I'm really not that I'm not that important, Larry. I mean,
I appreciate it. You're a military man, you're very respectful,
but please just just call me Jeff. Please, I'm not
a sir, you know, or well, talk to my kids.
It'd be nice if they called me sir. But anyway,

(01:25):
but let that go, Jeff, Let's not forget BBS owns
Sesame Street. That's a great point, which has generated billions
of dollars in Elmo sales and the like. PBS could
fully fund itself. And NPR, you're a genius, Larry, You're

(01:51):
a genius. I'm telling you that is so true. Here
I can say I still have it at home, you know,
in my kids were smaller, the coffee mugs, the Elmo
coffee mugs, the cookie Monster. Ava loved the cookie Monster,
loved the cookie Monster. Okay, maybe.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
Dumb.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
If I had a dollar for every time I heard
this stuff like this, i'd be a millionaire today.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (02:20):
Because she loves cookies, cookies and milk. It's it's one
of it. To this day, it's one of her favorites.
Cookie Monster t shirts, coffee mugs, posters. You wouldn't believe
the merchandise, the merch as they say that. I know
that my children, you know, you know, you know, basically

(02:42):
harassed Grace and I to buy them. Please, Daddy, please, Daddy, please, daddy, please, okay,
just get off my back, for God's sake. Whatever, die,
whatever it'll take that just can get you to leave
me alone. Okay, sure, you know, I'll buy you the
coffee mug. Okay, you know I'll buy you that hoodie.

(03:02):
Just leave daddy alone, for God's sake. So you know,
or the dolls. I mean, I could just go on.
They're mere. They're swimming in Sesame Street money and correct
me if I'm wrong. I don't think I'm the only
parent because you know, all of the you know, all
of Ashton's friends when they were obviously much younger, they

(03:23):
were all into Sesame Street. Ava's friends, they were all
into Sesame Street. My niece who's been, you know, visiting
me now, she came in last night with her her mom,
Grace's older sister. When she was young Sesame Street, all
of her friends Sesame Street. So don't tell me that

(03:44):
they haven't made a fortune off of Sesame Street. And yes,
PBS owns Sesame Street. So don't come crying to me
for money when you've got honestly one of the biggest
brands for children and the history of this planet. So
I don't believe them. They don't need our taxpayer money.

(04:07):
They just want our taxpayer money because governments over the
years have been stupid enough to just keep shoveling more
and more and more of our money. And it has
been billions of dollars, billions of dollars over the years.

(04:27):
No PBS can fund PBS and NPR just forget the
fundraisers forget. And by the way, can I just say
this super quick. I want to take calls, but I
need to get this off my chest. When I was
younger and I would, you know, i'd watch William F.
Buckley Junior's Firing Line or the McLaughlin Group, which I

(04:49):
thought was an outstanding show in the nineteen nineties. And
once in a while, especially when I was doing my masters,
i'd be up to like, I don't know, one to
two in the morning, and I'm working on my masters degree,
and I'm like, I just want to take a break,
So I turn on PBS, and believe it or not,
at around midnight one ish, they would actually have a
good movie selection, you know, like I know, hey, you

(05:12):
know Hitchcock Cycle or whatever, like just a really good
movie from the fifties or sixties, a nice classic movie.
Usually a good horror or a good drama. And even then,
whether I was watching Firing Line, the McLaughlin group, or
watching you know, Psycho with you know the Alfred Hitchcock
Cycho in the middle of it, you know the shower scene,

(05:36):
Dan Dan Dan Aha, she's getting stabbed right after that.
And here's a fundraiser for BBS. If you love this
kind of programming and you want to continue this programming, well,
twenty five dollars gets you a pen, fifty dollars gets

(05:57):
you a T shirt, and one hundred dollars at you
a coffee mug. And so they would interrupt these shows constantly,
or interrupt these movies constantly and just harangue you, bang
you up for cash, twenty five bucks, fifty bucks, one

(06:17):
hundred bucks to fifty five hundred. They really love you
to give them a thousand dollars, so they have commercials.
They hit you then with the fundraisers and you're taking
my taxpayer money. I mean, I'd be like it was
so I mean, i'd be like, I'm gonna I'm gonna
throw something at the TV screen. I go, this is ridiculous.

(06:39):
So I gotta go. I gotta sit through these painful fundraisers.
And then and by the way, nobody would call and
they would be like, oh boy, the phone lines are
just ringing off the hook. I'm like, I don't hear.
There's twenty people. They're all smiling at the camera with
the phone in front of them. This was in the
days of the hard phone, the hard line. And then

(07:00):
maybe you'd hear like dring ding ring, and then silence
for two minutes, drin dring, drink dring. Maybe you know
one phone here, one ring there, and the lines are
burning up, and they and they would just keep going
and keep repeating it. Twenty five dollars gets you a pen,
fifty dollars gets you a shirt, one hundred dollars gets

(07:21):
you a coffee mug. And I'm like, play the fing
movie for God's sake. So it was fundraiser after fundraiser,
commercial after commercial, taxpayer money after taxpayer money. I'm done.
I'm done. If the moonbats want them, they can fund them.
Not a penny more agree, disagree. President Trump cuts Allelujah

(07:47):
federal funding. He's completely defunding NPR and PBS. I say
demands a hero six one seven two six six sixty
eight six eighth is the number Ellie in Wooster. Thanks
for holding Ellie and welcome.

Speaker 4 (08:08):
Hey, how are you, buddy?

Speaker 1 (08:10):
I'm good. How are you? Ellie?

Speaker 4 (08:13):
Very good? You young puppy.

Speaker 5 (08:14):
You.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
I'm going to show my age now, you guys talk
about Sesame Street. Okay. I grew up with mister Green
Jeans and Captain Kangaroo. Oh wow, Jumping Jack's with Jack
Queline and his wife German Shepherd and Romper Room School
and Sherry Lewis and Lamb Chops. That's how old I am.

Speaker 1 (08:36):
Well, I do remember Romper Room. I used to watch
that as a little kid. I do remember very fond
memories of Romper Room as well.

Speaker 4 (08:44):
But fast forward to twenty ten, as I was coming
out of the as I was becoming a recovering Democrat,
I just flick it through the channels and I put
it on Channel too. It was Martha Speaks about the
Talking Dog. He's a cartoon and really opened my eyes
because it was all about the Democrat dogs versus the

(09:07):
fat cats, which were aka conservative. And I'm watching this
cartoon because that's Obama was in at the time, and
I'm going, oh my god. They were doctrinating little kids.
They were actually indoctrinating them and making them hate the

(09:28):
quote fat cats, which was the right side it. It
was like, from that day on, I didn't donate money
anymore to them, because, I mean, everything they charge over
the TV anyway on Channel two was pretty expensive. You know,

(09:48):
you always get charged more for some reason. We can
get it somewhere else cheaper. But when I found out,
I said, Wow, this is indoctrination right before my eyes.
And it's like I thought, until recently, I never knew

(10:09):
that it was our taxes paying that. I never knew.
I thought it was all donations.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
Oh no, I wish, Oh no, I wish. And that's
another thing. Now they've been caught in a lie. Look
I can read to you because I mean, people are
pointing out again their press releases, their statements that they
have said for decades, where they say it's only one
percent of our federal of our funding comes from federal

(10:39):
taxpayer money and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting CBP as
it's called. So I don't want to get too technical,
but Congress allocates the money, they give it to the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting CBP, and then CBP then spends
the money or just disperses the money to NPR, PBS,

(11:02):
other entities, but primarily NPR and PBS, and so they
would say, well, no, we're only getting about one percent
of our funding from CBP, from the you know, the
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Well, now that Trump is actually
turned off this spigot and said no, I'm defunding it.
I don't care. Nothing's going to go to the CBP,

(11:24):
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. So nothing's going to end
up in the hands of PBS and NPR. Now I
can show you their reversal. They issued a statement saying, now,
for many stations across the country, that's how they're framing it.
For many stations across the country, this is going to
amount to a fifty percent cut in our funding. We

(11:48):
cannot survive. That's why they're claiming he's trying to abolish
PBS and NPR. This is an attack on the constitution,
it's an attack on the free press. He's trying to
control our narrative, he's trying to destroy our editorial independence.
Blah blah blah blah. Because suddenly now one percent has

(12:09):
become fifty percent. So again they just make up numbers
whenever it suits them. Now personally, I don't care. By
the way, I don't believe him it's fifty percent. I don't.
I think they're exaggerating. They're lying. Maybe for one station,
and I don't know what. You know, somewhere in Alaska.

(12:29):
I'm not talking Anchorage. You know someplace in Alaska. You
know in in Pollucaville, Okay, some place that's there's ten
people in this town in Alaska. Yeah, maybe for that
one town it's fifty percent, Okay, But I don't believe that.
For most markets, most stations, it's fifty percent. No, I
don't believe them. I think it's much lower than that.

(12:52):
But I don't care. That's their problem. We should not
be subsidizing PBS or NPR. You want to be a
far left pro Democrat propaganda mouthpiece, If that's what you
want to do, that's your business. But you're not entitled
to our money. And frankly, no media outlet, no network

(13:17):
is entitled to our money. No radio network, no radio show,
no TV network, no TV show, nothing is entitled to
our money. We live in a free market country. We
live in a constitutional republic. We do not live in
a socialist superstate. We don't live in a communist country.

(13:40):
The media is supposed to be free. If it's free,
it's supposed to be independent. If it's independent, it should
not be taking any public money whatsoever. So to me,
that should settle the issue. Now, they've got a lot
of friends, a lot of rich liberals, a lot of
limousine liberals out there. Let ay, let them pony up.

(14:03):
Don't worry. They got big checkbooks. Trust me, writing a
check for a couple hundred million bucks for many of
them is peanuts. So go to your donors and do
what democrat billionaires do best, spend money. Thank you for
that call, Ellie. Oh really, this is I mean, it's insulting.
Oh really, to me, on one level, this is profoundly insulting.

(14:25):
So you gaslight us, you manipulate us, and lie to
us for years, and all of a sudden, now when
the gravy train stops, it's an existential crisis. Well, too bad,
produce better programming and see, and that's their problem. Look, seriously,
their news coverage is garbage. It's not just that it's

(14:46):
far left. It's garbage. Here. The fine people hoax you know, Charlottesville.
They Still it's been what now, eight years, they're still
peddling that lie, that truck Trump was supporting the Nazis,
the white supremacists, he said, there are fine people on

(15:07):
both sides. You're a liar. But what NPR is selling,
what PBS is selling. I can get it on MSNBC,
I can get it on CNN. I can do David
muirr on NBABC News. There it is. I can get
it on NBC. I can get it on CBS. I

(15:27):
can get I could go right down, what do you want?
New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Post, USA Today, Reuters,
Associated Press. I could go Politico. I could go on
and on and on and on. There's an endless supply
of far left media, Democrat media outlets, So why do

(15:52):
we need one more. That's in a way their problem.
You're selling what other people are selling, and frankly, most
people aren't buying. So now you can make it on
your own. That's your business now, to me, frankly, the
more interesting argument. And again, I'll take calls, I promise

(16:14):
six one, seven, two, six sixty eight sixty eight. In fact,
I almost have a full callboard, but I just want
to get one other point out, because Sandy did make
a very good point to me in our pre show
production meeting. She said, you know, Jeff Pps doesn't just
do news. PPS does do a lot of programs that

(16:36):
some people may like or may watch Rick Steve or
whatever is Rick Steve's or whatever it is. But anyway,
the guy who does the travel show, I've watched that occasionally.
People may like that. Honestly, there's some you know, pretty good.
Ashton will occasionally watch a cooking show. What is it?
There's Lydia's Kitchen and what's that French guy? Is its

(16:58):
chef Pepe Pepin pet Penn. However you pronounce his name Pepin,
all right, So it's Chef Pepin, according to Sandy. So
you've got cooking shows, you've got Masterpiece theater, You've got
some of these historical dramas. You've got certain shows on PBS.

(17:19):
You know that maybe people feel is of good quality
and they like to watch. Okay, So Sandy and I
were having a pretty extensive conversation off air, and to
make a long story short, I think she's a bigger
fan of PBS than she's letting on now. She says
she likes BBC she loves mystery dramas and mystery shows.

(17:45):
And apparently PBS and BBC do team up and according
to Sandy, they you know, they kind of pay for half,
you know, as you know, a Masterpiece theater or some
of these British mysteries. So and she loves the cooking
shows Julia Childs, big fan of Julia Childs. Loves chef
Jacques Pepein, big fan of Jacques Pepin. But anyway, now

(18:11):
I have to say Ashton does watch several of those
cooking shows. I'm not saying religiously, but he will watch
How do I know this because he texted me and
he's like dad, So that means I won't be able
to watch my cooking shows. I said, Ashton, no, man,
we're just not going to pay for it. I mean,

(18:33):
it's okay, son, even if PBS goes off the air
or relax. There are many other places for you to
watch a cooking show. There's something called the internet too,
by the way, you know. But anyway, and he also
watches Nova, which is one of these. He loves science
documentary shows, loves them, loves them, loves them, loves them.
So he does watch a few shows Sandy. I can

(18:57):
just tell by her knowledge of the cooking show and
the personalities and the history of the personalities, and then
of course all these mystery murder shows on PBS. I
think she's more of a wine sipping PBS viewer, that
she's more than she's letting on. I'm just that's just

(19:17):
my observation. I don't watch PBS. To me, I have
better things to do with PBS. If you want to
know my honest opinion, and forgive me for putting it
so crudely, I wipe my you know what with PBS. Okay,
and NPR, I wipe my you know what with NPR
and PBS. All right, but that's that's me. Okay, let

(19:41):
that go. My question to you. It's the Cooner country
Pole Question of the day. And really this is more
Sandy who has been driving this question than either me
or Mike, But anyway, it's still it's the Cooner country
Pole Question of the Day. The Cooner country Pole Question

(20:01):
of the Day sponsored by Marios Marios Quality Roofing, Siding
and Windows. Do you watch any shows or programs on PBS.
I don't just mean the news or you know, new
shows or magazine shows. Or whatever, No, no, no, anything.

(20:24):
Do you watch anything on PBS? A yes, B no.
You know where I stand. I'm a no. My children
are a little different, especially my Ashton. You would be
a yes, but Grace and I are a no. But
I want to know from you. You can vote on

(20:44):
our web page w r KO dot com slash cooner
wr or in the h to honor a chef Pepe
cunair so WRKO dot com slash cuonair, or if you prefer,
you can vote via x my handle there at the

(21:06):
Kooner Report all one word kuh and is in national Er.
Do you watch any PBS whatsoever? And the reason why
it's an important question is they're saying this is what
they're claiming that by cutting this federal funding, defunding both
PBS and NPR, it's an existential threat, and that both

(21:31):
PBS and NPR may go down. You may not be
able to watch any more PBS in the future. NPR
may just be taken off the air because they can't
afford it. They may go the way of Air America.
So would you miss PBS or would you miss NPR?
To me, I might be happy if they went under

(21:54):
that good riddance. But that's me Dave in New Hampshire.
Thanks for holding Dave, and welcome.

Speaker 6 (22:03):
Good morning, Jeff right taking my call, my pleasure down.
I had one I just really had like one point
that on your opening monologue you played some of the
interview with dom what's her name that the mayor, lady
there or whatever.

Speaker 7 (22:15):
The lady Catherine Mayor, the head of the NPI.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
Yeah, the CEO of of of NPR, Catherine Mayor.

Speaker 7 (22:24):
Yeah. My point was going to be, is she pretty
much shut down her own argument with her own words.
I mean, towards the end of what you played, she
said that it was set up that the government you know,
was not involved separation and shouldn't be involved in any way.
Then why should we be pained? Then why should the
government pay for them to shut down her own argument
with her own words? You know that? Let me do

(22:47):
this government has no part of it.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Because you're making an absolutely incisive and really intelligent point.
Let me play the cut again and then I want
you to directly respond to it. So this is NPR CEO.
She's on CBS. Now they're going nuts. Hey, the media
is going nuts because Trump is now announced he's going
to cut all the funding for NPR and PBS. So

(23:12):
this is Catherine Mayor. Listen now to that. She's claiming
it's an attempt at censorship, to control them. He's a fashist,
he's a deck fanner. He's controlling the media now, and
he's just like, no, say do what you want. You're
just not The Americans aren't. The taxpayer is not going
to be on the hook. Taxpayer is not paying for it.

(23:32):
That's all. Listen now to Catherine Mayor. Roll cut sixteen
a mike.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
When you see specific editorial criticisms like that, what do
you interpret the intention of this being?

Speaker 5 (23:50):
Well, I interpret the intention of this being trying to
create a narrative around our editorial independence and as I said,
it are.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
To control it, to control it, and.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
I think that that's a that is an affront to
the First Amendment. We have a independent newsroom and we
will always have an independent newsroom. From my perspective, part
of the separation of that the First Amendment offers is
to keep government out. In fact, the statute that was
written when the Public Broadcasting Act was signed into law
was very explicit about interference from any member of the government,

(24:22):
whether it is elected officials, whether members of independent agencies,
because it is so sacrisanct, that division between the state
and independent media.

Speaker 1 (24:32):
Look it is, Well, it's so Dave, it's so sacrisanct,
the division between the government, the state and the media. Dave,
it's so sacriicank. But give us your money, go ahead, Dave.

Speaker 7 (24:45):
That's exactly what I'm saying. She got herself down with
her own argument, So it's sacred sacrisank except for to
give us the money. You know, she wants us, especially
people like myself. You go in a country, you who
can't stand them to pay for them, but that she
you have no saying anything we do. And like you said,
we're not trying to shut them down. We're not trying

(25:06):
to tell them what they can and can't say. We're
just not going to pay for them, like if they
shut down her own i you know, with her own works,
you know. And that's just the first thing I heard,
you know, when they're on your monologue and it's pretty
much you know, it shows me everything I needed to see.
That it's only Sack saying when it comes down to
as long as they can do everything they want to do,
and we pay for it, but the shootings take the

(25:27):
money away. You know, it suddenly is different. You know,
I just I don't know. I agree that they need
I don't care if they go off the air. If
they can't live on their own merits, then that's their problem.
You know. It's like everything else. It's like you or
any company. If you can't do it under your own merits,
if you fail, so be it.

Speaker 1 (25:46):
Dave, let me ask you this, just to flip it around,
because I think this exposes the sheer hypocrisy and honestly
the stupidity of their argument. Should liberals in Massachusetts, let's
just say, just indulge me. Tru passes a law, or
Congress passes a law, and they say no, now hold on, wait, no, no,
the liberals, the moonbats, the Democrats in Massachusetts. Their taxpayer

(26:11):
dollars have to now go to fund Jeff Cooner. They
have to fund really, they have to fund WRKO, and
they have to fund the Cooner report. What do you
think the liberals would say, Dave? What they say? Sure,
it's the free press. Oh my god, If we don't
fund the Cooner report, it's unconstitutional, Oh my god, it's

(26:35):
it's an attack on the media if we don't support
the Cooner report or do you think, Dave, they would say,
why should our taxpayer money go for that? Right winger? Right?
I mean, isn't that what they would say?

Speaker 7 (26:49):
I think they would need to be worse than that. Yeah,
not only would they say that that, they come out
and say that they were trying to get it. You know,
we were trying to get them to fund the MATCHI
BODI and all this stuff, Okay, and I don't want
to and I don't want them to fund us for
you either, Like I said, I don't want to fund them.
I don't want them to fund us.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
And you know, I'm so with you, Dave, I'm so
with you. A free media is an independent media, which
means private funding. That's it, no government funding, because once
you take the money, you're no longer independent. Dave, thank
you very much for that call. Look, I don't care

(27:28):
what happens to NPR or PBS. I don't just to
it on your own dime. Six one seven. Look, think
about it, okay, just to really it would be the
equivalent of we have to we have to subsidize taxpayer
money every year, billions and billions. We have to subsidize
the Boston Globe. We have to subsidize CNN, we have

(27:49):
to subsidize MSNBC, the New York Times. What would you say? Sorry, money,
you don't have a write to our money. You get
your own financing, subscriptions, ads. However you finance it, that's
your business. But you don't have a claim on the
public's money. Since when? So how is NPR or PBS

(28:12):
any different? Six one seven two six six sixty eight
sixty eight agree, disagree? John in South Boston, Thanks for
holding John, and welcome.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
Hi Jeff, Hi John, I get someone to hear what's
talk to you for a second?

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Hi, Jeff, Kristy frog here. You said that TBS was
swimming in money. Can you introduce me to a French
chef at now bite legs or swimming and.

Speaker 1 (28:46):
Gun kermit the frog? John, That's not bad, John, I'm
just curious. Should we let's leave aside the news just
for a second, my friend, and I know I'm going
to sess him a street to not the muppets, But

(29:07):
should we be funding Big Bird and Elmo?

Speaker 8 (29:11):
Do you?

Speaker 1 (29:11):
I mean, what do you think, John? Should taxpayers like
you and me? Should we be cutting checks or sending
them our taxpayer money to keep Big Bird and Elmo alive,
or do you think Big Bird and Elmo can succeed
on their own?

Speaker 2 (29:25):
Well, big Bird's going to be introduced to a colonel
in a white suit. I haven't watched since the sixties.
Jeff and Ivel saying, make sure that defundred years ago,
you know they do get money from corporations. They would
have these documentaries on hammering the oil industry.

Speaker 1 (29:48):
Mike, John, please don't swear. Please, that's the only thing
you could see say crap, say fecie. He's say dreg
Please are you trying to get me fined? John? Please?
Six one seven two six six sixty eight sixty eight.

(30:09):
By the way, the text line is on fire. You
can text the cooner man seven zero four seven zero
seven zero four seven zero. Uh. This is from seven
to eight one, and it's a doozy and it really
shows you, by the way, how much of our money
actually goes into the pockets of PBS executives. If you

(30:32):
knew home man, you want to talk about lavish salaries
and these expensive junkets and trips that they take. Hey, hey,
if you knew what you were paying for. Oh, my god,
I've been saying this for years. It'd be a revolution.
So listen to this because this is so true. Seven

(30:52):
eight one, Jeff. How many PBS executives does it take
to change a light bulb? One hundred want to change
the bulb? And ninety nine to spend the summer touring
Europe to research the best kind. I'm telling you, it's

(31:15):
not that far off. They're all I remember in that building.
I'm like, is that is this? All these people do
is travel all year there and and they don't go
to I don't they don't go to a war zone.
You know, they're not going to the down Bass in
eastern Ukraine. I'll tell you this. Oh no, southern France, Italy,

(31:43):
you know, Vienna in Austria, you know, by the way,
or or they do like Bali in Indonesia, I mean
day A or you know, Costa Rica. But they're really
nice areas in Costa Rica. And I'm like, boy, you guys,
you guys are as bad as the members of Congress.

(32:05):
I mean, hey, you love those trips. Huh. Oh always
for quote unquote research. Robert in Maine, Thanks for holding Robert, and.

Speaker 8 (32:16):
Welcome, Hi Jeff, Jeff, Thanks so much for what you
do to help help President drug Then and his team.
I just wanted to comment on some of the things
you mentioned. You hit the dail right on the head
when you talked about how at one point it seemed
to be a little more balanced on National Proletarian Radio

(32:39):
and PBS and all that it was more balanced that
you mentioned some of the names of the programs, but
it's really going in the other direction. I trained as
a scientist, and I can tell you I watched Nova
once in a while, but even something like Nova, which
should be science and nothing else, if you watch it carefully,

(32:59):
you can there are a biases of a political view
that enter into that, and that's true for a lot
of their programming. But I did want to say many
years ago, I was on a plane going out to
California for part of my schoolague and the guy sat
next to was a really nice guy. He was kind
of in the middle politically. So we got to talking
and I asked him, you know what he did. He

(33:21):
said he was a station manager for a college radio station,
and as you probably know, if it's a college radio station,
not out of ten of those things are NPR. And
so we got to talk in and I said, you know,
I said, I'm a little worried because I like NPR.
I said, but it looks like it started to change

(33:42):
in some ways. And he said, you know, he said,
I'm worried about it too. He's honest with me. He said,
I'm worried about it too. And here's what I think
is happening. If you look at the class of the
sixties that came out of college schools of journalism and
English majors and political scientists and stuff like that, they
all started to flood the jobs at EDPR and at PBS.

(34:06):
It probably happened elsewhere too in the political makeup of
the country, but we certainly saw it there. And their
point of view was sort of determined to a certain
extent by what they learned in the schools, and in
particular what they learned in some of the largest state
universities from the professors. And it's all all behind I
think what happened to EDPR. So if somebody's looking for

(34:30):
an explanation as to why they're so biased now, and
everybody knows they are, I think a lot of it
was because of that flooding by these graduates of the
sixties colleges, flooding into positions of all sorts, journalism, station managers,
everything like that at NPR and at PBS. So that's

(34:52):
all I wanted to say.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
Oh you dead on, No, Robert, Look, I want to
thank you. Very thoughtful call. And you put your finger
right on the pulse of the issue. Look what happened
in the late sixties, and there was a term. This
was a deliberate strategy. And you can, by the way,
the best book to read on this is by David
Horowitz and Peter Collier, and it's called The Destructive Generation.

(35:13):
And it really saddened me. I think maybe a week
ago now, maybe three four days, but David Horowitz has
passed away. He was eighty six years old, and we've
had him on the show. We had him on the
show a few times. An absolute warrior, a brilliant conservative.
While he started off as a member of the New Left,
he was a radical. He was a leftist, and he

(35:35):
became the editor of their flagship magazine, Ramparts in the
nineteen sixties, and so he knew the left from the inside.
He was one of the leaders, the thought leaders of
the left. And he talks about his conversion, how he
became a conservative and why now? Why?

Speaker 7 (35:53):
So?

Speaker 1 (35:53):
The book is brilliant on so many levels, but what
he talks about in particular is he says, you don't
understand we just weren't.

Speaker 8 (36:02):
You know.

Speaker 1 (36:02):
It wasn't just the Vietnam War that we were against.
It wasn't just radical feminism and black nationalism and anti
americanism that we were peddling. We had a concerted strategy,
all of us. And it was and they called it
the long March through the institutions. They said, what we're

(36:25):
going to do is and they quote it the Their
favorite philosopher was Antonio Gramsci, an Italian. He was an
Italian Marxist, and he came up with this theory and
he called it cultural hegemony. And what Grams she kept
saying to the left was don't try to grab political
power because it won't work. You have to grab cultural power.

(36:48):
And once you can, you grab the You control the
commanding heights of culture, whether it's media, universities, schools, uh,
right down the line, Hollywood, radio, TV. Once you control
the key institutions of culture. His famous phrase, the state,

(37:10):
the government will fall in your hands like a ripe
fruit and so Horowitz lays out, in beautiful language, by
the way, a really good writer, that our strategy was
to march through every major cultural institution in America. And
so they said, we were going to take over NPR,

(37:32):
we were going to take over PBS, we were going
to take over CBS News, ABC News, NBC News. We
were going to take over the elementary schools, the high schools,
the colleges, the universities. We went to Hollywood. We're going
to take that over. Corporate America. We said, we're going
to take it over. And he said that was the

(37:53):
concerted strategy. And if you've noticed, really the country's never
recovered since because they have radicalized and politicized almost every institution.
And so if you notice the stake NPR and PBS,
they don't believe in journalism. Journalists always used to believe.

(38:13):
Check your facts, make sure what you're saying is just
the facts and nothing but the facts, and always give
both sides of a story. Doesn't matter what both sides,
and then let the reader decide. No, no, no, no.
They said, we're going to turn media into propaganda, into
power for the left. We're there to brainwash and indoctrinate