Smile Time: An Auto-Tuned Walk Through Reading Rainbow’s History

I grew up watching PBS. Men like Mr. Rogers, Bill Nye, and LeVar Burton were my heroes and role models. Sesame Street was (and is) the kind of show that taught you so well that you didn’t even know you were learning. PBS shows gave me critical thinking skills and a view of the outside world. PBS to me has always symbolized television at its best–a force for good in an unimaginative, rehashed, clichéd, commercialized, obnoxious TV landscape that brings out the worst in people.

Which is why it’s so frustrating and sad when “culture warriors” attack PBS. Why, because PBS teaches people to be curious? That there is more to the world than what comes out of a TV screen? PBS makes people less narrow-minded, and people who are less narrow-minded are harder to stuff into little mind-control boxes like Fox News viewers and talk radio listeners.

By the way, this image perfectly sums up what Fox News stands for:

http://www.nocaptionneeded.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Fox-News-Graph.png

If anything, we need more channels like PBS in this world. If ESPN can have like 12 different versions, we should at least have a couple more PBSs. I’m glad that with the transition to over-the-air digital television, there are more PBS channels now, such as “Create,” which has the best cooking shows on TV.