The illusion, of course, that reactionary hate-mongers like Palin want to push, is that NPR gets any significant funding from the federal government. In fact, about 3% or less of NPR's entire budget comes from the federal government. Consider that large corporate broadcasters, like Clear Channel, probably save at least that much in tax breaks and you have to ask yourself: What's Sarah Palin really trying to accomplish here? It's clearly not holding government accountable for anything, as NPR is demonstrably less invloved with government than her own employer News Corp.
As she, and Huckabee say, they're concerned over First Amendment rights. This week Palin-backed tea partier Christine O'Donnell also had a strange opinion about the First Amendment. O'Donnell suggested that since the words 'church, state seperation' themselves aren't written in the document, that this government was not intended to be a secular one. You know, it's amazing. They deride a constitutional scholar like Obama, but at the same time refuse to acknowledge the real context in which this document was composed. The writers, the intent, the history behind amendments are meaningless to people who find it more rewarding to accuse their ideological opponents of betraying it. That's why Palin thinks, seemingly in this instance only, that the First Amendment all of the sudden applies to someone other than citizens in relation to the government. While I have the right to call my governor, senator or president any rude name I can think of without going to jail for it, I don't have the same right to call my employer that same rude name without being dismissed from my job for it. That's how the First Amendment works, it's there to insure that the government doesn't have control over what people say. It's to make sure that the government works for the people, not the other way around. That's also precisely O'Donnell's confusion. Just as the First Amendment explains that it's not the government's job to tell us what words we are not to say, it also tell us that the government is neither there to tell us what to say. Government isn't there to tell us to say our prayers or follow Jesus or keep the sabbath day holy. They shouldn't even be there to tell us to trust in god, but thanks to a 1950's red scare, that exact phrase is printed on all our money.
That's all not even to consider the fact that an employer being allowed to fire an employee for unbecoming behavior, as is deemed by the employer, is already a major conservative talking point. I wonder why the freedom that Palin would support to, say, deny a Muslim woman the right to wear a headscarf at her job in Disney World, doesn't extend to the directors at NPR. Could it be, perhaps, that Disney is totally private company that doesn't ever get any tax breaks or federal subsidies? Whose employment is all contained within the United States? Oh, no? I mean, does Palin count every NPR employee as a public employee? Because that's fucking wrong. It's an independent corporation, not a wing of the FCC.
According to NPR CEO Vivian Schiller:
We are a private 501(c)3. We've had journalists call up and ask what department of the government we report to. That's laughable. Have you listened to our shows? We do apply for competitive grants from the likes of the Ford Foundation and the Knight Foundation. As a result, some money from CPB does come to us when we win grants. Depending on the year, it represents just one to three percent of our total budget.
Here's what's really going on here: It's more than Palin conveniently attacking an easily identifiable conservative target. It's the justification of the hatred and fear of Muslims. What Palin and Huckabee are saying, with the help of their employer News Corp., is that it's a valid position to be afraid of Muslims. Muslims work great as enemies on Fox, and all broadcast news sources. The images of olive-skinned, bearded men in keffiyehs has worked for years, even before 9/11, as a go-to symbol of terrorism. We've even got Fox news 'journalists' declaring all terrorists to be Muslims. At the very least, it takes the heat off of major, multi-national corporations who pollute the water you drink or Christian missionaries who rewrite the history books your children learn from or a tax-dodging, degree-forging, inexpereinced Christian extremist embarrassing what was, until her rise, a growing conservative movement.
But, as long as the right can identify their party with Christianity, and frame any non-Christians as the real problem, they can keep their support steady. And it doesn't matter how much you support Palin or Huckabee or O'Donnell on the issues, if you're being intellectually honest, you've got to admit that, at the end of the day, those people are far more interested in getting votes than they are in sharing religious beliefs. My question to the religious is: How much longer will you put up with being used?
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