Big Bird gets served up on a platter…
The Washington Post reports that in addition to Pat Harrison, we now have to deal with some other major GOP backers over at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
A leading Republican donor and fundraiser was elected chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting yesterday, tightening conservative control over the agency that oversees National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.
Cheryl F. Halpern, a New Jersey lawyer and real estate developer, won approval from the CPB’s board. She succeeds a close board ally, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who stirred controversy earlier this year by contending that public broadcasting favors liberal views. Tomlinson’s term as chairman had expired, but he will remain a member of the board.
The board also elected another conservative, Gay Hart Gaines, as its vice chairman. Gaines, an interior decorator by training, was a charter member and a chairman of GOPAC, a Republican fundraising group that then-Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) used to engineer the GOP takeover of the House in 1994.
I’m reminded of that scene in Air Force One when Harrison Ford grabs someone who has just suggested a way to save their lives and says, “If this works, you’re Postmaster General.”
Of course, in this instance Bush isn’t handing out offices to folks who have actually managed to save his life, but rather to people who managed to make sure he got the Presidency. The fact that the CPB now has a highly-placed member whose experience is as an interior decorator – but who was a major contributor to the initial Neo-Con revolution – suggests that maybe Michael Brown didn’t have to pad his résumé as much as he did. He could have just slid by on the strength of his donations.
What shocks and awes me about this administration is the out-and-out cronyism that makes up its very life’s blood. This is an administration built of family friends and donors – who are frequently one and the same – that makes a habit of rewarding failure and punishing competence. Can there be any doubt that this administration hands out its appointments like party favors to the guests who paid to get in?
And does anybody still think it’s a coincidence that the John Roberts nomination was announced so quickly and that Roberts worked for Dubya’s daddy, given that the nomination of a second justice is taking so long to come out?