Bye Bye Big Bird

Garrison Keillor?

Listening to the debate to defund NPR today on C-span, I heard several Democrats bring up A Prairie Home Companion and Car Talk. But those shows won't disappear if the government quits funding NPR. Neither will Big Bird.

I'm fine with all those programs. Yeah them. What I have a problem with is being made to support them against my will.

But they bring up Prairie Home Companion? Why should a penny of my tax dollars go to this guy:

"The French have a new president, the British will soon have a new P.M., and we envy them as we endure the endless wait for this small dim man to go back to Texas and resume his life."
-Garrison Keillor

How did the Party of Lincoln and Liberty transmogrify into the party of Newt Gingrich’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk?
-Garrison Keillor

The term "evil powers" is one you hear only in the church, or in Marvel comic books, or Republican speeches.
-Garrison Keillor

To the cheater, there is no such thing as honesty, and to Republicans the idea of serving the public good is counterfeit on the face of it — they never felt such an urge, and therefore it must not exist.
-Garrison Keillor

The frenzy on the right is pure fear of stepping out of line with the Republican politburo and getting shipped to Siberia. This lockstep mentality is rare in American history. Here is a grand old party frozen, suspended, mesmerized, in thrall to a gaggle of showboats and radio entertainers and small mobs of fist-shakers standing staunch for unreality, and no Republican elected official dares say, "Let us not be nuts." There will be books written about this in years to come, and they will not be kind to the likes of Rep. Boehner and Sen. McConnell.
-Garrison Keillor

I'm well aware that funding for NPR is just a drop in the bucket, and that it's distracting us from working on the real, necessary, cuts. But, since we are looking at it, and since just a few days after 9-11 the Diane Rhem show was talking about what we Americans did to bring this on, I say defund um, and move on. Every Senate Democrat will vote against it anyway.

***Update: Justin Credible (I think that really is his name) informed me that Keillor may be retiring soon. They're talking about a 2013 exit, which I suppose is OK with me, though I understand it's luckier to retire in years with the last two digits the same. I expect there will be a sonic boom when all that snark leaves the arena.