PragerU Not Taking Over For PBS ... Yet!
Reality is bleak enough, and Dennis Prager's disinformation factory does have a partnership with the Education Department. Eesh, no need to give them ideas!
The Trump administration is hard at work trying to remake American government in its fascist image, and that includes imposing rightwing culture wars on the Smithsonian and our national parks. The effects are already heartbreaking, including the recent success by congressional Republicans in pulling the plug on funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which won’t quite kill public TV and radio but will certainly mean the end for many small, rural stations that don’t have robust independent funding.
That said, we’re also a bit cheesed off at Vox for its framing of a story it ran Friday (archive link) which hints that maybe the administration is considering replacing PBS with content from the execrable rightwing disinformation factory PragerU (Not Actually a University™). Here’s the headline and subhed, with a disconcerting photo of Dennis Prager himself (they’re all disconcerting).
Just one small problem: The article — which is paywalled content for subscribers —is entirely speculation, without even a wisp of evidence that the administration is planning to replace PBS with PragerU garbage. Damn it, Vox, do better. No need to make things up when reality is awful enough!
It’s true that the CPB announced last week that it’s preparing to wind down its operations when its funding ends at the end of September, when most staff will be let go. After October 1, a “small transition team will remain through January 2026 to ensure a responsible and orderly closeout of operations.” Then the last Muppet out the door will turn off the lights. Probably Kermit; he has to do everything.
It’s a depressing memo, and reads like the final communiqué from an embassy that’s shutting down because invading troops have reached the outskirts of the capital. Or maybe we’re just flashing back to the outstanding PBS “American Experience” documentary “Last Days in Vietnam” again. So much of American life feels like the last days lately.
But as we noted last month when the vote took place, despite the loss of the CPB, PBS and NPR will remain, for at least some time to come, because both built up solid audience support and corporate/foundation donor networks. Local stations rely more heavily on CPB funding, which they use to buy programming from NPR/PBS, so eventually the loss of those funds will shrink what the networks can do.
It really is horrible. And we won’t be surprised if at some point the administration does indeed try to set up its own propaganda network. But Vox is doing some serious speculation when it jumps from noting that CPB is going away to suggesting that PragerU is just itching to “fill the educational void” left by CPB.
The actual thing goin’ on between PragerU and what remains of the Department of Education is certainly disturbing all on its own. Last month, as part of the administration’s runup to next year’s semiquincentennial of the Declaration of Independence, the White House had a little party to launch a gross partnership with PragerU, which created a bunch of icky AI videos in which frightening animated “paintings” of Founders give you a short patriotic lecture. GROSS.
Secretary of Wrasslin’ and Education Linda McMahon and PragerU CEO Marissa Streit burbled about how great and patriotic it all was, and presumably the sounds of children screaming at the scary paintings were edited out.
In sort of a bizarre departure for a rightwing movement that hates DEI, the “museum” also includes a section on “six ladies of the Revolution,” so it’s shoehorning in some diversity without admitting to it.
Vox notes that in one of the videos, John Adams quotes fellow Founder Ben Shapiro saying, “Facts do not care about our feelings.”
The White House even hosts a guide for folks who want to re-create the full PragerU Founders Museum experience in their own schools or basement rumpus rooms. To do it exactly right, you’ll need 83 gold frames for the portraits. (There’s an Amazon Link for the frames ($60 for 5) but if you have enough printer ink you can print out the portraits directly from Prager.) PragerU also sells its own “Honest Book of America's Founders” (not a wonket link, we stopped) for a mere $35, also at Amazon.
Inspired by the Passover Seder, this interactive ceremony guides families in honoring the bravery, sacrifice, and values that shaped our nation. It’s everything you need to turn Independence Day into a celebration of freedom, purpose, and patriotic pride.
Oh the joy. You get “A ready-to-use ceremony script,” “Founding Father profiles,” a timeline of important Bicentennial Semiquincentennial Moments and “Fun, educational activities for all ages,” shoot us now. There are no customer reviews yet, which suggests a rare exception to the old HL Mencken line that no one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.
Because we are servicey, we even watched PragerU’s Patrioglurge video about Martha Washington, which amazingly doesn’t lie as far as we can tell. It’s pretty anodyne “why America is Great” stuff, as far as it goes, and the AI is very Uncanny Valley:
To be sure, we can suggest some edits to the script, like when Martha says, “I kept the home fires burning, not knowing if I'd ever see George again,” that should be followed with “smiling at me with his dentures made from teeth pried from the mouths of slaves, which was the fashion at the time.”
Similarly, when Martha tells kids, “Freedom is not the burden of soldiers alone. It belongs to all of us,” a more honest account would add, “But not for the 577 human beings George and I kept enslaved over the course of his life at our plantation. You can read more about our history as enslavers at the Mount Vernon website, since it's not mentioned here for some reason.”
History, as they say, is a work in progress.
But back to the Vox piece, which includes a partial transcript of Vox’s podcast interview with Washington Post education reporter Laura Meckler about what PragerU is and why it’s kind of nuts. Kudos to Ms. Meckler for shooting down the speculation that PragerU is poised to swoop in and replace PBS, too. Meckler explains that while a number of states have arrangements with Prager’s Patriotic Propaganda Palace, none of them mandate it be used in classrooms. It’s bad enough that the videos are made available as “approved” supplementary material, though it’s unclear how many teachers are actually using it, if any.
But when the Voxcast host asks if it’s a very convenient coincidence that PragerU is gaining a foothold in states “at the same time as the federal government just defunded PBS,” Meckler says hold your horses, I’m not seeing anything specific happening there, although it’s certainly all part of the stupid war on “woke ideology.”
“That said, let’s not give it more power than it has. If you go to most education in this country, most classrooms have teachers who are doing their best to present a fair-minded read of history. The best teachers are challenging their students to look at it from multiple points of view and to understand that there is more than one way to read history.”
There, we have said a nice thing about a WaPo reporter, the end.
New Lessons For Florida School Kids: Native Americans Were No Saints, Slavery Much Nicer Than Death
[Vox (paywalled, archive link here / Mount Vernon]
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As is my tradition, any mention of anything Prager related comes with my reminding that Dennis M. Prager is an anagram for Mr. Penis Danger.
I applaud South Park for their transition to documentary filmmaking.