Hear Hear

Just saw a piece in the Times about budget wrangles in Washington over PBS, and I had to agree—the radio side is a useful service with lots of quality stuff, and the TV side is moribund. Way back, PBS was the one source for both high culture and edgy new stuff. Today, it's pathetic—if I wanted to watch the local PBS station tonight I could see Lawrence Welk, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, and Red River. I haven't seen any television at all in a while, but I imagine these yawners would be liberally larded with 30-second "enhanced identifications" for Archer Daniels Midland and, presumably, products such as Geritol and Serutan.

I was going to say that PBS did a very cool thing back in 1969 by showing the Peter Hall version of A Midsummer Night's Dream.We all goggled in amazement when Oberon said "Ill met by moonlight, proud Titania!" and pretty soon (about 1:25 into the clip) we could all see at least a couple of things Titania had reason to be proud about. I was going to say that this was PBS in a nutshell, high culture and edgy (for then) at the same time, but you know what? It was shown on CBS, not PBS. Huh.

OMG, I just read that the S.S. Minnow from Gilligan's Island was a sarcastic reference to Newton Minow, the farseeing Federal Communications Commission chairman who said in 1961 that television was a vast wasteland. I ask you to contemplate this: The Gilligan's Island people dissing the man who said television was a vaste wasteland. It utterly confounds logic—it's a koan.

Well, enough surfing around, eh? Let's you and me go see what's going on IRL.