How Long Did It Take Them To Kill Big Bird?

On news that the rescissions package had passed the Senate early this morning, including elimination of federal money to public broadcasting, I decided to check how long the idea of "killing big bird" had been in the public imagination. It's been at least since the 1990s:

“Every time Congress comes at public broadcasting, Big Bird is held up,” Sesame Street creator Joan Ganz Cooney told an interviewer in 1998, “as a crucifix is to a vampire.” Three years prior, when Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY) took the floor to argue against proposed cuts to public broadcasting funding, he brandished a small Big Bird doll. “Don’t kill Big Bird,” he extolled, “because public broadcasting works, public broadcasting is good for the American taxpayer, and good for the American people.”

From the Tampa Bay Times in 1992:

Columnist George Will has had his fill of Sesame Street.

"Does Big Bird need a subsidy?" he asks.

Heritage Foundation scholar Laurence Jarvik hates the whole antique structure of the thing.

"Public television is a relic," he says. "The high priest is Bill Moyers. The sacred symbol is Big Bird. And you have people always asking you for offerings."

The same story quoted Bob Dole, who noted that people were complaining to him that Republicans, by holding up a financing bill, were threatening "to derail democracy, tear up Sesame Street, kill Big Bird and starve the Cookie Monster."

In other words, the idea of "killing big bird" had been in the language at least by 1992, but I'm almost certain I'd heard it before then. Still, this at least means the phrase was 20 years old by the time Mitt Romney brought it up in the 2012 presidential campaign:

Sad news, Sesame Street fans. That meanie Mitt Romney wants to cut funding for PBS, the public television network that has broadcast Big Bird and her fellow Muppets since 1970. "I like PBS, I like Big Bird," he claimed during Wednesday's [October 3] presidential debate. "But I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for."

Although Big Bird had been a metonymy for PBS by at least 1992, the exploitation of cloying characters from its childrens' programming went back to 1969, only two years after its founding:

On May 1, 1969 Fred Rogers, host of the longtime children's television landmark Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, appeared in Washington before the Senate Subcommittee on Communications to express his disagreement with a proposal by President Richard Nixon to cut federal funding for public broadcasting from $20 million to $10 million.

. . . Over the course of Rogers' passionate yet respectful testimony, Senator Pastore's gruff demeanor slowly softened. The chairman even said that, though he was "supposed to be a pretty tough guy," Rogers' fervent plea had given him "goosebumps." Pastore effused: "I think it's wonderful. I think it's wonderful," and, after a slight pause, he made his conclusion clear: "Looks like you just earned the twenty million dollars."

In other words, PBS's "for the children" defensive strategy had been successful for at least 56 years, and Big Bird had been part of that strategy for more than half that time. Another part of that argument was that the PBS budget was only a rounding error in the federal deficit, and any cut would be meaningless.

As far as I can see, up to Trump 47, Republicans had simply conceded these arguments. But all of a sudden, Big Bird is dead. Except it wasn't Republicans who killed it:

[W]ith the rise of streaming, it became difficult for the preschool staple to maintain being on PBS due to licensing fees once DVD and video sales tapered off. "Sesame Street" simply couldn't maintain staying on PBS without the revenue needed to produce the show, which is when HBO stepped in. But after completing their five-year deal, HBO, now known as Max, is shifting its focus to content for adults and families according to Variety.

On one hand, times changed. But on the other, congressional Democrats, even in this year's budget debates, with Sesame Street canceled by HBO, still fell back on Elmo to try to keep funding for PBS. But for the first time in nearly 60 years, Republicans finally won that symbolic fight. Under Trump. I can't disagree with him here:

I have had more success in 6 months than perhaps any President in our Country’s history, and all these people want to talk about, with strong prodding by the Fake News and the success starved Dems, is the Jeffrey Epstein Hoax. Let these weaklings continue forward and do the Democrats work, don’t even think about talking of our incredible and unprecedented success, because I don’t want their support anymore.

Something's truly hinky here. Cutting funding for PBS had been a small but symbolic item on the Republican agenda since Nixon's first term, and only Trump finally accomplished it -- but B-list Republicans are drowning it out with Epstein, Epstein, Epstein. I'm scratching my head.