By: Keith Kappes
Columnist
Carter County Times
One of my favorite relatives, Uncle Richard, liked to joke about his efforts to lose weight. He often bragged about knowing the surefire, no fail method for dropping pounds that worked for everyone. It goes like this:
“If you put something in your mouth and it tastes really good, quickly spit it out!”
His little joke came to mind last week when Kentucky Educational Television (KET) announced that it would not televise next month’s Fancy Farm Political Speaking in West Kentucky.
If you follow politics and have lived in Kentucky for at least a year, you should know that the modest little barbecue to benefit St. Jerome Catholic Church has been the birthplace and/or deathplace for many statewide political careers in the Bluegrass State.
Always scheduled on the first Saturday in August, the Fancy Farm event gets unusually heavy news media attention and large, enthusiastic crowds who like to heckle the politicians, and the statewide exposure on KET adds to its impact with voters in both parties.
KET says the upcoming elimination of federal funding of public radio and television funding by Congress and the Trump Administration means they can no longer afford to televise such an important public event.
Even worse, KET may be forced to reduce or eliminate other valuable programming. And that lack of funding also could become a severely damaging blow to Kentucky’s public radio stations like WMKY, which has served Carter and other area counties from its home base at Morehead State University for 60 years.
That reference to spitting out something good is intended to show that the opponents of public broadcasting are willing to take away the positive benefits of cultural and educational programming in order to punish what they claim is biased news coverage at the national level.
I can’t imagine Sesame Street not being available to future pre-schoolers like it was to my kids and grandkids or not being able to tune in shows like Antiques Roadshow, The NewsHour, This Old House and Nature.
And I never dreamed that someday Big Bird might be on the endangered species list.
(Contact Keith at keithkappes@gmail.com).
