May 26, 2021 01:25 PM UTC

Doug Lamborn's No-Win War On Big Bird Resumes

• 10 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Ernest Luning at the Colorado Springs Gazette reports, the lamest perennial quest in Colorado politics–except maybe for the campaign to swap the names of Mount Democrat and Republican Mountain, also courtesy Rep. Doug Lamborn–to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for its supposed liberal indoctrination of the children and/or the voters with your hard-earned taxpayer dollars is back for another no-go-around:

U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn has introduced legislation to pull the plug on federal subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and National Public Radio, he said Monday, claiming the public TV and radio outlets have “increasingly turned into a mouthpiece for the left.”

The Colorado Springs Republican has been trying to eliminate the organizations’ federal funding for at least a dozen years, arguing that taxpayers shouldn’t be subsidizing media conglomerates that receive the bulk of their funding from private sources, including membership dues and corporate underwriters.

Previous versions of his message suggested that it was time for Big Bird, the iconic “Sesame Street” character, to “earn his wings and learn to fly on his own,” but in this year’s announcement, Lamborn also cited NPR’s election year coverage of alleged scandals involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter as a reason to cut its funding.

Coming as a surprise to absolutely no one, the 2020 elections have given Rep. Lamborn a whole new set of grievances. Lamborn’s statement on the latest iteration of the Big Bird Must Die Act:

Last year, National Public Radio further discredited their institution and journalistic standards by refusing to cover a story that was damaging to then-candidate Joe Biden. NPR and PBS have increasingly turned into a mouthpiece for the left. This is why I am once again introducing legislation that would defund National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Government subsidization of programs that refuse to publish actual news is fiscally irresponsible. With the current out-of-control spending in Washington, we should not provide funds to organizations that already receive sufficient funding from the private sector.

The big story that National Public Radio “refused to cover” was Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop containing purported evidence of wheeling dealing crack-smoking sexytime–and as Luning correctly explains, NPR was far from alone in their reluctance to touch a dubious story about the family member of a presidential candidate (as opposed to the candidate) right before an election. Hunter Biden and his exhaustively hyped laptop have been recirculating in conservative media once again in recent weeks for the want of factual complaints with which to dent President Joe Biden’s solid approval ratings, but outside the conservative media bubble nobody cares. Not after four years of Donald Trump’s perfidious offspring in the White House.

With this in mind, it’s a safe bet this latest hook for Rep. Doug Lamborn’s same old axe to grind won’t get him any farther toward his goal in the Democratic-controlled House than it has every other time he’s tried to cut funding to public broadcasting since 2007. Under Republican and Democratic White Houses alike, Big Bird and company always give Lamborn the slip to indoctrinate the kids and voters another day.

Perennial failure makes Colorado’s lamest perennial political quest…even more lame.