Oscar The Grouch Trashes Fox "News" on Sesame Street. Reich-wingers go nuts.

Ian David

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Tue Nov-03-09 12:57 PM
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Oscar The Grouch Trashes Fox "News" on Sesame Street. Reich-wingers go nuts.

Edited on Tue Nov-03-09 01:35 PM by Ian David

Run time: 00:36
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eO-1j9T90-8

Posted on YouTube: October 31, 2009
By YouTube Member:
Views on YouTube: 0

Posted on DU: November 03, 2009
By DU Member: Ian David
Views on DU: 2651

And predictably, the reich-wingers are absolutely enraged about it.

Here is my YouTube comment on the video:

After what Conservatards have done to PBS over the years, they should shut-up & deal with it. Elections have consequences, payback is a bitch, & losing is SUPPOSED to taste like a sh*t taco. This is for Melanie Martinez, the former host of The Goodnight Show. This is for Carol Greenwald, the Executive Producer of Postcards from Buster. Reich-wingers, don't YOU lecture US on "politicizing" PBS. This is for decades of fighting against YOU, just to keep PBS on the air. We won, losers. Yes, We Did!

If you have a YouTube account, please go there and rate-up both the video, and my comment? Thanks!

Also, here is reich-wing screed:

�Sesame Street� Trashes Fox News
by Stage Right

Add one more soldier to the Left�s war on Fox News: Oscar the Grouch.

Last week, in a re-broadcast of an episode that originally aired two years ago, Oscar starts his own news network, GNN (Grouchy News Network). An irate viewer calls in to berate him that the news is not grouchy enough:

�I am changing the channel. From now on I am watching �Pox� News. Now there is a trashy news show.�

Later in the episode, Anderson Cooper from 4th place CNN, guest stars as a reporter for GNN. He interacts with �Walter Cranky� and �Dan Rather-Not� � Muppets representing real-life liberal news personalities � and they talk about �Meredith Beware-a� and �Diane Spoiler.� But no affectionate nicknames for Fox News personalities; no Spill O�Reilly or Brittle Hume � nope, and the only disparaging characterization of real-world news is reserved for Fox: Fox is a POX. It is trashy. They didn�t even attempt to try �MessyNBC.�

If Mom and Dad watch cable news, it�s better than 50/50 they watch �POX News.� So what gives? PBS � a network partially funded with my tax dollars � has the right to tell my kids that their parents watch �trashy� news? The message is clear, I can�t even sit my kids in front of �Sesame Street� without having to worry about the Left attempting to undermine my authority. And don�t tell me, �If you don�t like it change the channel.� There are no channels left! It�s everywhere. Just last week I had Obama�s service and volunteerism promoted on every single major network, including Disney and Nickelodeon.

<snip>

The fact that this is a re-run from an episode written during the Bush Presidency only reinforces that this is nothing new. The Left has been doing this for years now. All of us have seen it and felt powerless to mention it, because if we do, we�re ridiculed and dismissed (thank you, Mr. Alinsky).

More (Warning: Reich-wing Website):
http://adjix.com/x6j3

See Prior Threads:

NYT: PBS Firing of Host of �The Good Night Show� Draws Protests
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2437128

Kids' Show Host Fired For Starring In 'Technical Virgin' Video
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=105x5413580

"Buster" producer axed from TV conference
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3055718

A Child Learns a Harsh Lesson in Politics (more on Buster)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x1214858

Message from WGBH re "Postcards from Buster", "Sugartime"
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=158x2958

See also:

PBS Panders to Right With New Programming
9/17/04

A new public television program called the Journal Editorial Report, featuring writers and editors from the arch-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page, will debut tonight on public television stations around the country. The show joins Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered, hosted by conservative CNN pundit Tucker Carlson, and a planned program featuring conservative commentator Michael Medved as part of what many see as politically motivated decisions to bring more right-wing voices to public television.

According to reports in the public broadcasting newspaper Current (1/19/04, 6/7/04) and in the New Yorker (6/7/04), conservative complaints about the alleged liberal bias of the program Now With Bill Moyers contributed to the momentum to "balance" the PBS lineup. The new programs seem to be the result of that pressure. In fact, Now will soon see its role on public television diminish, as the program is cut from one hour to 30 minutes when Moyers voluntarily leaves the program later this year. He will be replaced by co-anchor David Brancaccio, formerly of the public radio business show Marketplace, who expresses no obvious ideology. If Carlson, Medved and the staff of the Wall Street Journal editorial page are all necessary to balance the liberal Moyers, by 2005 there will be no one on PBS to balance them.

At the center of this controversy is the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which provides significant federal funding for public broadcasting projects. Two Bush appointees to the board last year, Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines, are big donors to the Republican Party, and do not hide their political agenda. As Common Cause noted in December 2003, Gaines raised money for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga), and chaired his political action committee, GOPAC: "At the same time that Gaines was raising money for Gingrich's GOPAC, Gingrich was pushing Congress to cut all federal funds to public TV."

At a confirmation hearing for Halperin, Sen. Trent Lott (R.-Miss.) criticized a commentary by Moyers as "the most blatantly partisan, irresponsible thing I've ever heard in my life," adding that "the CPB has not seemed to be willing to deal with Bill Moyers and that type of programming." Halperin responded: "The fact of the matter is, I agree," though she said at the time there was little the CPB could do about it.

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1971

Extra! September/October 2005
Time to Unplug the CPB
Replace corrupt board with independent trust
By Steve Rendall and Peter Hart

Veterans of the battles over public broadcasting know the script by now: Right-wing Republicans denounce NPR and PBS for being too �liberal,� threatening to cut their federal funding. Public broadcasting�s defenders rally to �save� Big Bird and the like.

The difference this time around, though, is significant. The right-wing Republican is not a politician per se. He�s Kenneth Tomlinson, chair of the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), and thus the man in charge of distributing federal dollars to public broadcasters.

Tomlinson�s charges about the liberal bias of public broadcasting coincided with a congressional attempt to make deep cuts in the CPB�s operating budget. The CPB provides approximately $400 million a year to NPR and PBS�about 15 percent of the two entities� combined budget.

The attempted cuts sparked significant protests, and on June 23 the House of Representatives voted to partially restore funding�considered at least a partial victory for the liberal and progressive groups who had called for restoring CPB funding. Soon thereafter, a Senate Appropriations Committee vote made the full restoration of CPB funding very likely.

More:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2671

Published on Wednesday, April 27, 2005 by The Nation
PBS: Republican Broadcasting Corporation
A conservative coup is underway at PBS.
by Ari Berman

The new head of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (the gatekeeper between lawmakers and public broadcasters), Ken Ferree, is a staunch Republican proponent of media deregulation and a former top adviser to FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Three top CPB officials, all with Democratic affiliations, departed or were dismissed in recent months. For the first time in its 38-year history, the CPB ordered a comprehensive review of public TV and radio programming for "evidence of bias." All new PBS funding agreements are conditioned upon the network following "objectivity and balance" requirements for each of its programs.

Last January, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings denounced the cartoon rabbit Buster, of "Postcards from Buster" fame, for visiting a lesbian family in Vermont. The decision to slash in half the popular investigative show NOW after Bill Moyers' departure, and the addition of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Tucker Carlson (who has since left for MSNBC) to the programming line-up proves just how far right PBS has moved in an attempt to appear fair and balanced. "This is the first time in my thirty-two years in public broadcasting that CPB has ordered up programs for ideological instead of journalistic reasons," Moyers told The New Yorker last year.

A majority of the CPB's eight-member board--chaired by Ken Tomlinson, a good friend of Karl Rove--are now Republican appointees. Two of the newest, Gay Hart Gaines and Cheryl Halpern, have donated more than $800,000 to the Republican Party since 1995. Gaines once ran a political action committee for Newt Gingrich, who as speaker of the House pushed to "zero out" all of PBS's federal funding. In 2003, PBS President Pat Mitchell offered Gingrich a town-hall style show. It would've happened if Gingrich wasn't already under contract with Fox News.

Ironically, the CPB was created to shield PBS from political pressure, just as PBS was intended to address the "needs of unserved and underserved audiences." One can hardly argue that the WSJ edit page or Tucker Carlson fit into that category. "To find the same combination of conviction, partisanship and ideological extremism on the far left," wrote my colleague Eric Alterman, "A network would need to convene a 'roundtable' featuring Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, Vanessa Redgrave and Fidel Castro."

More:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0427-33.htm

Unfortunately, YouTube won't let me link back to the thread on DU about this. Oh, well.