Ken Burns is full of it, doesn't even remember The McLaughlin Group featuring Pat Buchanan on PBS 1982-2016

 

 Ken Burns: "I Push Back" On Allegations Of Bias, PBS Had William F. Buckley On "Firing Line" For 32 Years

 

 

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr., broadcast 1966-1999, was exclusively on PBS only from 1971, so 28 years.

Burns, a Democrat and Democrat donor, was 18 in 1971 and can't have been very well acquainted with the long-standing opinion already existing at the time among conservatives that PBS was hostile to conservatism.

 

As it was, neither The McLaughlin Group nor Firing Line ever received favorable time slots on PBS.

 

In point of fact, in Chicago back in the day Saturday night at our house was always make-pizzas-at-home-night, when most people went out. We wanted to stay home to enjoy watching both of these programs, which were broadcast back to back during the dinner hour on PBS, often followed by The Three Stooges and Svengoolie on a different channel, WCIU 26.

 

The playing field for conservatism was never level at PBS, and certainly isn't now.

Prohibition: An Alliance Between Evangelical Christians and Criminals

So said George Will last year in his review of Daniel Okrent's book which details how the women's war on men's drinking inspired a chain of constitutional and social changes ills:

Women's Prohibition sentiments fueled the movement for women's rights -- rights to hold property independent of drunken husbands; to divorce those husbands; to vote for politicians who would close saloons. ...

Women campaigning for sobriety did not intend to give rise to the income tax, plea bargaining, a nationwide crime syndicate, Las Vegas, NASCAR (country boys outrunning government agents), a redefined role for the federal government and a privacy right -- the "right to be let alone" -- that eventually was extended to abortion rights. But they did.

Now the "darkly hilarious" story has been immortalized by none other than Ken Burns on none other than PBS.

Don't miss it.

You can watch it online, here.