The, ummm, flap over Big Bird is nonsense but, still, we can't help but give Sesame Street a thumbs down for continuing to insist on public funding through PBS.
Sesame Workshop, an independent non-profit organization headed by a million-dollar-a-year CEO, is hands down the most lucrative franchise carried on PBS, taking in more than $100 million a year from licensing fees for its many, many products as well as in donations and grants.
Remember, publicly funded PBS does not own Sesame Workshop. If PBS ceased to exist today and stopped giving Sesame Street a subsidy every year, Big Bird and his buddies would show up tomorrow on a commercial station and Sesame Street would continue doing extremely well financially, thank you very much.
Meanwhile PBS continues to be funded by a federal government that is - what is the latest trillion-dollar figure? - $16,157,753,419,211 in debt as of last Wednesday.
If you think we can afford to keep subsidizing a popular childrens' TV program that is making millions of dollars on its own, consider that a year ago at this time, the federal debt was $14,860,324,039,615.
In other words, the federal government borrowed $1.3 trillion in the past year to cover current spending. That is another $1.3 trillion the children watching Sesame Street today will have to pay back when they are grown up.
Nice, eh?