Is Big Bird a member of the tea party?
You might well ask.
The morning after the debate, “Big Bird” showed up in Washington — in the production offices of public radio’s WAMU, the public radio station on the American University campus and, for all I know, also a transmitter of public television. “Big Bird” said he was looking for a new job. General hilarity all around. Nice gesture. Fun.
But now, down to the nitty-gritty. Let’s take a look at this exchange between Mitt Romney and PBS’s Jim Lehrer, debate “moderater,” during the debate, courtesy of The Nation:
LEHRER: All right.
ROMNEY: Jim, let me just come back on that — on that point, which is these…
LEHRER: Just for the — just for record…
(CROSSTALK)
ROMNEY: … the small businesses we’re talking about…
LEHRER: Excuse me. Excuse me. Just so everybody understands, we’re way over our first 15 minutes.
ROMNEY: It’s fun, isn’t it?
LEHRER: It’s OK, it’s great. No problem. Well, you all don’t have — you don’t have a problem, I don’t have a problem, because we’re still on the economy. We’re going to come back to taxes. I want move on to the deficit and a lot of other things, too. OK, but go ahead, sir.
ROMNEY: You bet… …The Nation
Reed Richardson, at the Nation, writes:
This certainly isn’t journalism, much less debate moderation; it’s more akin to a deferential talk show host trying to navigate into commercial break. And that verbal tic you see above—“all right”—was a phrase that Lehrer used no less than 17 times, often taking up a spot where an engaged journalist would actually try to, oh I don’t know, actually ask a follow-up question. ...The Nation
You bet!
May I take this thoughtful moment to remind you just how poor old PBS struggles to keep alive these days — I mean, apart from our little donations?
The following corporations have funded PBS programs:
Exxon Mobil
Liberty Mutual
Suburu
Canon Inc.
Chevron
Bank of America Corp.
Intel
Monsanto
Toyota
Merrill Lynch
General Motors Corporation
Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad
GlaxoSmithKline
BP
Merck
Pfizer Inc
Siemens AG
Dow Chemical Company
McDonald’s
Columbia Forest Products
That comes from Source Watch, a service we should refer to more often as a reminder that public broadcasting’s real and reliable efforts to be even-handed, politically, in their position of public trust, they can’t help but be influenced by mindful of what keeps them from pushing that jobless number up to 8 and higher.
That doesn’t mean Big Bird, like the tea party, is funded by Americans for Progress AKA the Koch Brothers. It does mean that the nameless thingies we call presidential debates aren’t debates and aren’t transparent, open, and fair. They are a device for the use of candidates for the presidency to play patticake right out in public before the election. So it’s as well we remind ourselves that these candidates are already “by, for, and of” the people but also “by, for, and of” corporations.
Mitt Romney’s largest campaign contributors during his 2012 presidential are as follows
Goldman Sachs $676,080
JPMorgan Chase & Co $520,299
Morgan Stanley $513,647
Bank of America $510,728
Credit Suisse Group $427,560
Citigroup Inc $363,015
Barclays $349,400
Wells Fargo $320,025
Kirkland & Ellis $309,042
Deloitte LLP $286,110
PricewaterhouseCoopers$266,650
UBS AG $259,200
HIG Capital $220,495
Blackstone Group $219,525
Bain Capital $172,500
Elliott Management $172,475
General Electric $158,800
Ernst & Young $156,425
Marriott International$154,837
Bain&Co $145,800
Sheeeesh! All that Source Watch seems to have on Obama is this: University of California, Microsoft, Google, DLA Piper, and Harvard University. Keep looking …. under the carpet, too, please.
Oh, okay. Open Secrets has the list.
University of California $1,648,685
Goldman Sachs $1,013,091
Harvard University $878,164
Microsoft Corp $852,167
Google Inc $814,540
JPMorgan Chase & Co $808,799
Citigroup Inc $736,771
Time Warner $624,618
Sidley Austin LLP $600,298
Stanford University $595,716
National Amusements Inc $563,798
WilmerHale LLP $550,668
Columbia University $547,852
Skadden, Arps et al $543,539
UBS AG $532,674
IBM Corp $532,372
General Electric $529,855
US Government $513,308
Morgan Stanley $512,232
Latham & Watkins $503,295