As the battle is joined for the federal budget, pleas to sign an online petition are being circulated, because of a Republican proposal that would "zero out" federal support for PBS and NPR.

My reaction to an invitation to sign the petition was: Let's keep National Public Radio. You can have PBS.

I don't know how it is in other cities, but the huge and well-funded PBS station in San Francsico, KQED-TV, is practically a public scandal. Endless hours devoted to fusty, irrelevant shows like Antiques Roadshow and This Old House; endless more hours devoted to showing old 60s and 70s rock stars in seemingly recent concerts, and you can tell the concerts are recent because the audiences are fat, middle-aged people like me.

Yes, I'm a baby boomer -- turning 55 in a couple months -- and I find it intensely embarassing to flip over to channel 9 only to see an aged James Taylor playing to a house of aging baby boomers. It looks like a freaking AARP rally.  

I guess we deserve it. Aren't we the generation whose "identity politics" insisted that the media reflect us? Well, there we are, in all our boiler-busting, bifocals-wearing glory, enthusiastically clapping as Carole King comes on stage for the duet. Holy crap.

The travel shows, the cooking shows, the endless hours of shows about puttering -- fixing things around your house, gardening, dusting off that old flintlock over the mantle to bring it down to be evaluated for its antique value. What person watches this drivel?

I'm not even going to start on the pledge drives, except to say that the on-air personalities, who only emerge during these fund-raisers,  remind me of the blackberry vine in the garden which kept popping up no matter how many times we tried to kill it. Eventually I think a blowtorch finished it off.

National Public Radio, on the other hand, is fantastic. The station (which in SF has the same call letters and originates from the same building as the TV station) broadcasts tons of cool, relevant and innovative programming. PBS, on the other hand -- it's as if NPR did nothing but broadcast "A Prairie Home Companion" over and over again.  

Look, Republicans, you couldn't possibly be serious about killing off funding for PBS. I can understand going after NPR -- it really educates and informs people, and nothing's more threatening to conservatives than an educated, informed voter. But what could possibly threaten you about PBS?