Because I can’t bring myself to deal directly* with the horror that is the director of the Environmental Protection Agency working to eliminate more environmental protections** in order to increase coal production***, I will take this opportunity to refer to another, earlier, federal statement on coal miners. Back in March, White House budget director Mick Mulvaney defended his department’s slashing of funding for diplomatic, social, and educational programs with the following:
“When you start looking at the places that will reduce spending, one of the questions we asked was ‘Can we really continue to ask a coal miner in West Virginia or a single mom in Detroit to pay for these programs?’ And the answer was no,” Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a Thursday morning interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe. “We can ask them to pay for defense, and we will, but we can’t ask them to continue to pay for the Corporation of Public Broadcasting.”
I note that the answer was “no” because they asked only people who were determined to craft a budget from the president’s campaign promises. Here’s what happens if they ask me:
So … leaving aside why we can in clear conscience ask such people to pay more of their taxes for defense than they already do … and leaving even more aside why we are acting as though individuals can choose where their taxes are going and should “pay for” only those things that might affect them personally****…
…Why would slashing funds for public broadcasting affect these people?
We shouldn’t even have to answer that one for “single moms,” but okay: because many, many parents, especially overworked ones, want to have educational programming they can trust, without commercials (okay, sorry, that’s no longer accurate, but they’re still much tamer and calmer than the other networks’), available for their kids, or themselves, to watch.
But coal miners? Why do coal miners need public television?
Two reasons:
1) The obvious reason: So coal miners and their families can watch public television. I mean, come on. People are people, and it can’t actually be true that no one with the job of coal mining, in a culture of coal mining families, could be interested in, or passionate about, the kinds of programming that publicly-funded television can provide.
And, less obviously, 2) So the rest of us can watch public television and learn about coal miners, past and present.
Here are some example shows and clips from a quick PBS programming search:
- American Experience: The Mine Wars
- American Epic: 1920’s Coal Miners strike
- PBS NewsHour: Coal miners’ health care collides with budget showdown (April 24, 2017)
- Columbus on the Record: Ohio’s Uncertain Coal Future (March 31, 2017)
- And finally: Stay Tuned: Anthracite Fields. Back in March when I did this search, I was surprised to find a 10-minute clip about Anthracite Fields, a Pulitzer-winning multimedia performance that my chorus commissioned and premiered, which drew on the experiences of anthracite coal mining families. So, it’s a PBS piece about a piece of music that’s about coal miners. Maybe extra meta-, but then, that’s something you can get with public television.
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*Except, apparently, in footnotes.
**I don’t know why this feels any more appalling than the simultaneous multi-pronged attacks on reproductive rights and women’s health and freedom – maybe it’s just on my mind because among this set I heard of this one last. I think all of them happening together takes me back to the barrage of executive orders from January that made it clear the main tactic of the new administration would be swamping the country with so many disparate changes we couldn’t hope to address them all in turn.
***Having never had to live it, I’m pretty disturbed by the idea of recreating these photos of the smog and pollution of American cities before the Clean Air Act.
****Not to mention the idea that we should pick specific people and decide that if something doesn’t affect them, then it isn’t important for anyone in the country. (Or, as I suspect in this case, to say well, my friends and I don’t want to pay for these things, so because it would sound wrong to say the budget should be based on what affects or doesn’t affect me, I’ll suggest some random other people who sound more worthy, and pretend for spurious stereotypical reasons that this is what affects or doesn’t affect them.) Since I’m not mentioning these things here, perhaps they will need another post of their own at some point.