Killing Big Bird

It has been a dream of mine to see NPR and PBS defunded. Here's hoping.

Jul 22, 2025

[Our] reverence for the truth might be a distraction that's getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done.
—Katherine Maher, President, NPR

I remember lying on the carpet as a child, listening to Garrison Keillor’s nose-hairs whistle faintly as he regaled the country with stories of Americana, featuring fictional sponsors like Raw Bits, Powdermilk Biscuits, and Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery. These were all mildly humorous, but the humor obscured a bitter irony: You were the sponsor, whether you liked it or not.

Those days might soon be over.

Censorship! they cry from the echo chambers of MSDNC. They’re killing Big Bird!, say the pundits frequently enough to make a drinking game out of it.

But we know a brand like Big Bird is probably too big to fail, even in the absence of tax subsidies. We also know that ceasing to force a majority of the country to fund media they neither listen to nor agree with is not censorship. Alas, these are the upside-down talking points of a party in retreat, circling the wagons around their single-payer propaganda organs.

Add the following talking points to the objections:

But we are all expected to fund things we don’t approve of with our taxes.
But the NPR/PBS/member station budgets are just a drop in the bucket.
But how will young children get quality educational programming?

I’ll come back to these points.

As I grew older, I developed a sensitivity to NPR’s slant. I observed how they would trot out articulate, soft-spoken presenters to deliver news in a way that inspired trust, but then invite partisan guests or use partisan sound bites, while the presenters themselves maintained the appearance of neutrality.

Over time, however, the partisan slant became increasingly brazen, to the point where even the presenters would offer absurd opinions as if they were facts, omit vital pieces of information from cherry-picked stories, or reveal their allegiance to social justice fundamentalism.

By the time former NPR producer Uri Berliner nailed his 95 Theses to the door of 401 9th St NW, Suite 2044, most of us had become wise to it—including the elites who were happy to take your money and mine for their favorite drive-time propaganda. (Where’s my taxpayer tote bag?)

Our Democracy: We Must Fund Things We Hate

To me, it’s important to mitigate, wherever possible, the government’s forcing anyone to fund things they despise. Indeed, I’m at the end of a spectrum where no one is compelled to fund anything without their consent. By contrast, the other end of that theoretical spectrum should be that everyone must fund as many things as possible without their consent. (This is sometimes unironically referred to as the “social contract.” But I digress.)

To steel the man, the implicit idea is that “our democracy” requires tradeoffs and compromises among voting blocs, and that’s just the way it is, notwithstanding the spirit of the First Amendment. A reasonable corollary to the idea that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press,…” ought to be that Congress shall make no law requiring the forced subsidy of speech or the press. When these compromises mutate into a bipartisan arms race for national mind control—at our expense—we (the people) must establish limits.

A free market in media can control our minds perfectly well.

Since we seem doomed to live out our days in partisan warfare over who controls the state's coercive machinery, I am 100 percent in favor of moving as many programs as possible along the spectrum toward consent-based approaches, away from coercive ones. And of course, if Big Bird is as Big as everyone claims, he will have no problem selling yellow plush toys to new mommies. Indeed, wealthy salon socialists should have no problem kicking in extra for the quarterly NPR fundraising drives.

After all, it’s just a “drop in the bucket.”

Subsidies for the Wealthy: NPR Listeners vs. National Average:

45% earn over $100,000 (vs. 25% nationally)
67% have college degrees (vs. 32% nationally)
Higher concentration in upper income brackets
Strong correlation with education levels

Our Budget: Just a Drop in the Bucket

If it’s just a drop in the bucket, why do NPR/PBS detractors care so much? You see, that tack cuts both ways. With throngs of brainwashed listeners looking for their intravenous hit of regime sound bites and self-congratulation, won’t the Corporation for Public Broadcasting be able to stay solvent? Or is it that, thanks to decentralized media, single-payer TV and radio are going the way of Stephen Colbert? I suspect Morning Edition and All Things Considered will be just fine.

While it’s true that a few billion here and there is peanuts in the vile red-ink sea of the Big Beautiful Bill, for example, it still feels like elitist ideological enemies are raiding your pockets for change.

Our Children: How Will They Get Programming?

Peppa Pig, Blues Clues, Story Bots, and Doc McStuffins do just fine for educational programming—off the top of my head. All of these are privately supported and provided. I suspect fan favorites like Sesame Street, Bluey, and Daniel Tiger could easily be taken private, too.

There’s only so many times you can press the outrage button and expect to get the same result. Call it outrage fatigue or bullshit detection. What about the children?!? has always been an effective defense of any public trough, but we’ve heard it so many times it’s lost its potency.

In the unlikely event that Sesame Street goes the way of the dodo, you’ll find me chewing gum and passing out handkerchiefs at Big Bird’s funeral.