Said query was put forward by California Democrat Robert Garcia, who didn’t seem to be especially interested in taking Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” hearings on Wednesday very seriously. The hearings put NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger in the crossfire of Trump-backed Republicans, horrified to apoplexy by the concept of drag shows, and attempting to sell the idea that public broadcasting is the true bane of American civic life. For their part, Maher and Kerger mostly held their own, pointing out things like the fact that both networks are still widely trusted by the majority of Americans in a landscape where basically ever other local news source is being increasingly blown to hell, and noting that the Corporation For Public Broadcasting that supports both groups’ budgets represents a tiny fraction of federal spending.
Of course, it wasn’t all rational defiance: There was also some light capitulation on display, too, as Maher, for instance, thanked Rep. Tim Buchett for giving her an opportunity to publicly distance herself from social media comments she made in 2020, calling Donald Trump a “fascist and a deranged racist sociopath.” She also attacked previous leadership at NPR for not pursuing the Hunter Biden laptop story harder, saying “Our current editorial leadership thinks that was a mistake, as do I.” (Paula Kerger, meanwhile, responded to questions about a digital segment called “Drag Queen Story Hour” by dodging questions about whether right-wing moral panics about drag performers are worth justifying with a response, and instead clarified that PBS’s only connection to the segment had been having it posted on its web site by an employee, before it was abruptly pulled.)
Shockingly, this low-key bending of the knee did not mollify Greene, who accused the pair of grooming, and called for the total dismantling of the CFPB—almost like the whole thing was just a pointless bit of political grandstanding whose only actual merit was giving us that Elmo clip to watch a few more times. Alas!
[via The New York Times]
