Kurt Vonnegut to appear on NOW

PBS's news and public affairs program "NOW" routinely offers excellent investigative and news programming that tends to focus on issues and stories that the mainstream media shys away from.

It was launched by Bill Moyers who recently retired from the show, but who has threatened to return in the face of the nasty attempt by the right to de-fund PBS, and the revelation that Bush's stooge whom he appointed to head the CPB, or Corporation for Public Broadcasting, had paid someone $10,000 to "monitor" the NOW program for "objectionable" content. Hell, that's not bad pay for watching an hour long television program once a week.

At any rate, this week's show will feature an interview with famed novelist Kurt Vonnegut. It should be very interesting. Vonnegut rarely appears on television, and this should be a treat for his fans.

NOW is aired Fridays locally on WQPT (ch 10 on Mediacom cable) at 7:30 p.m. and on KIIN (ch 12 on Mediacom) at 9:00 p.m.

Of note is that when the right wing-nuts started attacking PBS and threatening it with destruction, railing about it's one supposedly "biased" show, NOW, WQPT quickly knocked NOW off it's Saturday prime time slot and replaced it with the slanted "Journal Editorial Report", which is nothing but the ultra-conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board sitting around expressing their views.

While the conservative minders wailed about unfair liberal slant on NOW, they have no problem with a show, paid for in large part by taxpayer funding, which amounts to subsidizing a news company for advertising their product. The Wall Street Journal corporation makes a lot of money. Why should taxpayers pay them to produce and air a show promoting their product and their views?

The conservatives have no problem with this. Nor do they have any problem with Tucker Carlson's biased program either. The right has suceeded in bullying and intimidating PBS into airing more programing reflecting the conservative corporate ideology, while attempting to silence the only truly independent non-commercial public affairs programming available.

And don't get me started about the fact that Rush Limbaugh has been being aired over Armed Services Radio for years and years now, yet there is no equivelent voices from the other side of the political spectrum allowed.