Big Bird's a Pinko, Charges Writer

Red alert! Big Bird is part of a plot by Hollywood liberals to poison children and adult minds with "pinko" ideology. That's the claim maxi-conservative author Ben Shapiro argues in his new book. And it's not just Sesame Street and reruns of shows including M*A*S*H that are packed with insidious messages like promoting pacifism, he writes. Friends undermines family values, MacGyver encourages Americans to think that "guns are bad," and even apparently all-American Happy Days has an "anti-Vietnam war" subtext, snorts Shapiro in Primetime Propaganda.

The "most powerful medium of mass communication in human history has become a vehicle for spreading the radical agenda of the left," according to publisher HarperCollins, describing Shapiro's message. The writer interviewed dozens of leading industry figures, some of whom "admitted" to presenting a left-wing bias in programing, Shapiro writes, as they seek to "shape America in their own leftist image." Not very successfully, apparently. (More Ben Shapiro stories.)