OP-ED COLUMNIST
Don’t Mess With Big Bird
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: October 5, 2012 597 Comments
Mitt Romney’s Big Bird swipe during Wednesday’s debate raised some hackles: PBS’s, many on social media and mine.
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Romney told the debate moderator, Jim Lehrer:
“I’m sorry, Jim. I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to — I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”
Those are fighting words.
Social media, and others, exploded in Big Bird’s defense.
PBS itself issued a tersely worded statement on Thursday, saying:
“Governor Romney does not understand the value the American people place on public broadcasting and the outstanding return on investment the system delivers to our nation. We think it is important to set the record straight and let the facts speak for themselves.”
Exactly! What they said!
Big Bird is the man. He’s 8 feet tall. He can sing and roller skate and ride a unicycle and dance. Can you do that, Mr. Romney? I’m not talking about your fox trot away from the facts. I’m talking about real dancing.
Since 1969, Big Bird has been the king of the block on “Sesame Street.” When I was a child, he and his friends taught me the alphabet and the colors and how to do simple math.
Do you know how to do simple math, Mr. Romney? Maybe you and the Countess Von Backward could exchange numbers.
Big Bird and his friends also showed me what it meant to resolve conflicts with kindness and accept people’s differences and look out for the less fortunate. Do you know anything about looking out for the less fortunate, Mr. Romney? Or do you think they’re all grouches scrounging around in trash cans?
I know that you told Fox News this week that you were “completely wrong” for making that now infamous 47 percent comment, but probably only after you realized that it was a drag on your poll numbers. Your initial response was to defend it as “inelegantly stated” but essentially correct. That’s not good, sir. Character matters. Big Bird wouldn’t have played it that way. Do you really believe that Pennsylvania Avenue is that far away from Sesame Street? It shouldn’t be.
Let me make it simple for you, Mr. Romney. I’m down with Big Bird. You pick on him, you answer to me.
And, for me, it’s bigger than Big Bird. It’s almost impossible to overstate how instrumental PBS has been in my development and instruction.
We were poor. My mother couldn’t afford day care, and I didn’t go to preschool. My great-uncle took care of me all day. I could watch one hour of television: PBS.
When I was preparing for college and took the ACT, there were harder reading passages toward the back of the test. Many had scientific themes — themes we hadn’t covered at my tiny high school in my rural town. But I could follow the passages’ meanings because I had watched innumerable nature shows on PBS.
I never went to art or design school. In college, I was an English major before switching to mass communications. Still, I went on to become the design director of The New York Times and the art director of National Geographic magazine.
That was, in part, because I had a natural gift for it (thanks mom and dad and whatever gods there may be), but it’s also because I spent endless hours watching art programs on PBS. (Bob Ross, with his awesome Afro, snow-capped mountains and “magic white,” will live on forever in my memory.)
I don’t really expect Mitt Romney to understand the value of something like PBS to people, like me, who grew up in poor, rural areas and went to small schools. These are places with no museums or preschools or after-school educational programs. There wasn’t money for travel or to pay tutors.
I honestly don’t know where I would be in the world without PBS.
As PBS pointed out:
“Over the course of a year, 91 percent of all U.S. television households tune in to their local PBS station. In fact, our service is watched by 81 percent of all children between the ages of 2-8. Each day, the American public receives an enduring and daily return on investment that is heard, seen, read and experienced in public media broadcasts, apps, podcasts and online — all for the cost of about $1.35 per person per year.”
PBS is a national treasure, and Big Bird is our golden — um, whatever kind of bird he is.
Hands off!
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- Matt Miller
- Opinion Writer
How Biden can win the vice presidential debate
Sorry, Democrats, but someone has to say it: Talking about what a “liar” Mitt Romney is may feel good right now, but if that’s what Joe Biden focuses on Thursday night, he’ll blow the vice presidential debate just as President Obama blew the first one.
No, if Biden wants to help the ticket make up for ground lost since the Denver debacle, he needs a different approach. An approach that doesn’t assume his listeners already agree with him. He needs to walk people through some political realities the way he’d explain them to a small roomful of independent or undecided voters.
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Matt Miller
A senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund and co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center,” Miller writes a weekly column for The Post.
“My friends,” Biden should say, “we can’t be sure at this point what Mitt Romney’s ‘real’ philosophy and values are. He governed Massachusetts as a centrist Republican and did things that I applaud — like enacting a universal health plan with the support of Ted Kennedy. That plan became a model for the president’s national reform.
“But then Governor Romney sold his soul to the right wing of his party to get the nomination – and adopted extreme conservative positions on taxes, immigration, health care, women’s rights and more.
“Did Romney call for well-off Americans to contribute nothing to deficit reduction — or for hard-working high school graduates to be deported, though they were brought here as children – or for millions of poor workers to be stripped of basic health coverage – because he really believes in this pinched vision of America? Or did he do it because he thought that’s what it took to win the nomination?
“I have no idea, my friends. And neither does anyone else.
“That’s the point. It’s impossible to know Mitt Romney’s real values. But it’s entirely possible to understand the conservative forces Romney has pandered to and empowered in his thirst for office. They’re the same extremists who will be calling the shots if you send him to the White House.
“The selection of Paul Ryan was part of Governor Romney’s strategy to court the right wing. The key thing I want to persuade you of tonight, then, is why Congressman Ryan’s values, and those of today’s congressional Republicans who stand with him, are out of step with America’s best traditions and current needs.
“Let me be clear: I’ve worked with Republicans over my entire 40-year career. You can’t accomplish anything in Washington if you don’t. But something a little crazy has gotten into the water the GOP has been drinking these last few years. Too many Republicans today won’t support the policies we need to renew America’s middle class and assure opportunity and security in a global age.
“Let me also stipulate that Paul is a hard-working young man and has a lovely family. My critique isn’t personal. But Paul is skilled at wrapping his ideas in a pleasant-sounding package that I’ll ask you to look beyond tonight.
“Here are three things you need to understand about my opponent and the congressional Republicans who share his views.
“First, on taxes: The single highest priority of Mr. Ryan and Republicans in Congress has been to cut taxes on America’s top earners — even though we’ve been at war for a decade and have huge deficits to shrink. This is the first time in our history that America has cut taxes for top earners at a time of war. Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans think we should let other people’s children fight our wars, and let other people’s children pick up the tab for them later. The president and I believe this is wrong.
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Univision encuentros a win for Hispanic viewers
BY FABIOLA SANTIAGO
FSANTIAGO@MIAMIHERALD.COM
For two nights, the Univision presidential forum “ El gran encuentro” displaced the telenovela Amor bravío (Indomitable Love) set in a grand Mexican ranch that raises fiercely competitive bulls for the ring.
The Big Meet didn’t come close to bullfight status, but interviewers Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas, the anchors of Univision’s nightly news, gave no free passes — not even to a friendly president more popular than his challenger with the network’s national audience.
As a result, the winners were the country’s 50 million Hispanics, whose concerns — the economy and jobs but also immigration, health and education — were pointedly posed before the candidates.
Republican challenger Mitt Romney seemed relaxed and tanned, but nothing could save him from the 47 percent question. He fell short all night, choosing to answer questions with well rehearsed campaign-trail lines.
President Barack Obama, who is handily winning the Hispanic vote, strolled on set exuding confidence — too much of it, perhaps — but before he knew it, he had to buckle down to a serious grilling on his failure to deliver immigration reform.
“You promised that, and a promise is a promise, and with all due respect, you didn’t keep that promise,” Ramos said at one point. Salinas also delivered a reminder of that failure at the end of the interview.
Though neither candidate said anything news-breaking, their presence alone at a forum of this magnitude conducted in Spanish was significant and unprecedented, an important recognition of the country’s fastest-growing minority.
Add that both candidates underestimated Ramos and Salinas — journalism royalty to consumers of Spanish-language news and excellent interviewers — and it’s not a stretch to say that these forums will be remembered as historic.
The only off-note came when the Republican audience booed Ramos when he asked Romney about his comment in February that illegal immigrants would “self-deport.”
Obama was asked harder questions than Romney — about the threats to the U.S. embassy in Lybia and the role the U.S. should play to curtail the violence in Mexico — yet the largely Democratic crowd was better behaved. The only reaction visible to viewers was laughter when Obama acknowledged with humor that Ramos had made his point on his immigration-reform failure.
With these forums, another important point was made — to the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Univision set up the encuentros in response to the commission’s refusal to include Hispanic journalists among the moderators in upcoming debates. The commission also declined to allow Univision to host a debate.
But Ramos and Salinas, who speak English as well as any native and have interviewed leaders around the world, have earned their seats at the national table.
Almost as indomitable as the bulls at the fictional ranch La Mal Querida (The Unloved) Ramos and Salinas may have taught their colleagues a thing or two about inclusion.
The 23 million Hispanics eligible to vote in November are too important to ignore.
