First PBS, now Cable?!

The White House has seen to it that those damn liberals--you know the ones: the people who produce science shows like Nova, that guy from Wall Street Week, and the literacy commies at Sesame Street--are no longer in charge of PBS. Instead, thank God! smart guys like Tucker Carlson now have shows on public television. Not because viewers of PBS, generally the poorest but most inquisitive of television watchers, want to see Tucker's smug little smirk every day, but rather because public TV doesn't grovel enough in front of the almighty Right. Jim Lehrer, the pussy, has made a career out of having no strong opinion on anything, and the rest of PBS' programming is either non-political or so fucking centrist as to be meaningless. This takeover of PBS started, I think, before the 2000 election, when my PBS station in Chapel Hill, NC began showing a documentary about John McCain during the presidential campaign. It wasn't an ad for McCain, nor was it airtime that was purchased by McCain for him to speak, but rather it was a television show about his Vietnam service and heroism. What, you may wonder, would possess public TV to suddenly air what amounts to a free commercial for a Republican presidential candidate? Well, it seems that Congress wanted to see more conservative fare on PBS (which, incidentally, doesn't run anything that I would call "liberal fare" on balance), so I guess the only batshit conservative PBS could fucking stomach was McCain. Hence, the free campaign ad.

But the point of this post is a show that's coming on the Discovery Channel this month. It's called "Building Babies" and it will use "microsurgical video technology" to film an embryo as it grows into a tadpole, and then a fish, and then a monkey, and then eventually, a human fetus.

The promo for the show is of a set of "doctors" looking earnestly into the camera and proclaiming what a breakthrough this is for "science." Also included is a "mother" who is all sappy over a 3D plaster cast of the embryo that some schmuck in ortho made for her (hey, buddy! Get back to making leg braces!!), and exclaiming, "I can hold my baby in my hands before it's even born!"

Uh, yeah, except that mold looks more like a lima bean with eyes than a baby.

Nonetheless, everyone in the commercial refers to it as a "baby."

Now, do you want to know what I think is going on here? Just like PBS, I think this is a sop to the crazy Right. Lefties will view this show as cutting-edge science and won't object. Nutballs from the conservative mainstream, however, will see this as a vindication for their unfounded belief that abortion is murder: "See? See?!? It's a BABY! It blinks and moves its fingers!! I think it just said "I love Ronnie Reagan"!! Oh how cute!"

If medical science is going to get into the business of selling cuteness over reason, eschewing biology for sentiment and whoring to the loony Right, then let's just give in to the crazy fucks in Jebusland and go back to faith healing. Who needs doctors if they can't even demonstrate this one biological fact: it's not a HUMAN. It's a BLASTOMA. It could be a fucking kangaroo for all you know--all animals LOOK and ARE the same at such an early stage of development. It may have human DNA, but it also has gills for God's sake!

Why is the Discovery Channel shilling for the anti-abortion terrorists?