In a Thursday Washington Post column exploring how 2010 is the best year for conservatives since 1980, George Will insisted that "NPR's self-immolation" over the Juan Williams firing made it clear the starting point for deficit reduction is "public" broadcasting subsidies. The column ended with these lines:
The 2010 elections made "card check" as dead as government subsidies for broadcast journalism may soon be.
As icing on conservatism's 2010 cake, there was NPR's self-immolation. It fired Juan Williams, ostensibly for speaking about certain feelings he has - and deplores - regarding some Muslims in some settings. NPR probably fired him because his views are too heterodox for some NPR liberals who favor diversity in everything but thought.
From its inception in 1967, as a filigree on Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which in 1970 begat NPR, has been a solution in search of a problem. Forty-three years later, in the context of today's information cornucopia, "public" broadcasting - its advocates flinch from candidly calling it government broadcasting - is even sillier than would be a Corporation for Public Newspapers.
But in 2010, NPR became useful. It became a conservative answer to the liberals' challenge, "Where precisely would you begin cutting government?"
In the last two years, before the House Republicans made it politically unfeasible, Obama administration agencies were seriously studying plans for "public newspapers," no matter how silly George Will found it.
