are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

[anotheranon]

I found this through a circuitous route of email, BoingBoing, and Neil Gaiman's journal (don't think this has appeared on the LJ RSS feed yet): The Department of Education is deciding what will and won't get funding for closed captioning, and have chosen to exclude a bunch of shows that discuss witchcraft.

My first reaction was to launch a vicious diatribe re: how this violates church/state separation, how dare 5 people at the DOE decide what's worthy of captioning for the deaf, etc. And I do find it interesting that their choices for exclusion were deemed "inappropriate"...

But then I got to wondering - why does the Department of Education have ANYTHING to do with closed captioning? Shouldn't this fall under the FCC, or under the various government initiatives promoting accessibility for all? I also find it interesting that, like Neil Gaiman, this is the only article I can find on the subject, with no links to primary sources at DOE or elsewhere.

So much as I love to bash the Bush administration, I'm going to hold off until there's more to go on.

Comments

"We're from the government, and we're here to help - - "

[timcharmorbien.livejournal.com]

It's not so much the government's reversal on what shows they will close caption as the fact that a) they have announced that they have new guidelines, but won't tell anyone what those guidelines are, and b) won't tell anyone who is on the panel that decides what programs the government will pay to close caption. Is this a state secret of some kind? Are we trying to keep our precious closed captioning resources safe from terrorist threats? It's just the kind of paternalistic attitude that the Bush administration seems to favor. "Don't worry your pretty little heads about our procedures, or those people we've detained indefinately without legal counsel, we know what's best for you, America! Now, run along and play!"