In the waning weeks of their financial relationship with the federal government, the powers that be at PBS and NPR all appeared to agree on the same, rather bizarre strategy. Rather than argue that their programming is necessary because of its unique educational and instructional nature or that it fills niches in cultural and artistic instruction that are necessary but not profitable enough to be addressed by private broadcasters, they all decided instead to insist that they are the only thing keeping poor, rural Americans in touch with the outside world and also keeping the poors from being killed, at any moment, by various natural disasters. NPR CEO Katherine Maher, for example, insisted that she and her network are the only source of news and emergency information for “large rural communities, large tribal communities.” This followed PBS documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ contention that defunding the public networks would “affect mostly rural communities,” because, you know, rural communities are backward and ignorant and don’t really have any other way to learn about the big, wide world:

My biggest thing is, I travel around the system all the time… And you begin to see the way in which, particularly in those small rural markets, the PBS station is really like the public library. It’s one of those important institutions. It may be the only place where people have access to local news, that the local station is going to the city council meeting.

They’re going to the school board meeting. They’re going to the zoning board. There’s a kind of sense of local accountability. And as news becomes nationalized and even internationalized, there’s a loss there. It’s not just—they’re not just losing the prime-time schedule. They’re also losing contact with emergency alert systems and Homeland Security and continuing education and classroom on the air, along with our—with children’s programming and prime time.

Part of this, of course, is strategic. The public broadcasters know that most people view them as pretentious, highbrow snobs, coastal elites who care only about their own, very narrow fixations, yet expect all American taxpayers to fund them. They know that they have a perception problem, which is to say that they know most Americans perceive them as useless, condescending, and tax-sponging. To (belatedly and half-heartedly) counter that perception, the public broadcasters want desperately to convince the public to think of them as “everyman,” as the literal lifeline to America’s heartland, the saviors and defenders of the common folk. It’s a desperate and ridiculous strategy, to be sure, but it is a strategy, nonetheless.

The bigger part of all this, however, is that people like Katherine Maher, Ken Burns, and the rest of public broadcasting’s defenders actually believe what they say. They honestly think that Americans who live in the vast expanses of flyover country between New York and San Francisco are backward, ignorant, and totally unaware of the world around them, especially anything that might be considered “sophisticated” or “enlightened.” They truly and deeply believe that they are the only light that occasionally breaks the deep, profound, and otherwise endless darkness that is “rural” America. Of course, they need PBS and NPR. Without PBS and NPR, well…those people would get all their information from the spinster schoolmarm at the one-room schoolhouse or—Gaia forbid!—from a snake-handling revivalist preacher! And heaven only knows how many dimwitted Dorothys and Totos would be swept off the plains of Kansas every year without public broadcasters to warn them to stay away from funnel clouds, no matter how enticing they may appear!

In some ways, this bizarre PR campaign on behalf of PBS and NPR mirrors the bizarre political campaigns run by the Democratic Party of late. Knowing that they were struggling to reach men—rural men, in particular—the powers that be in the Democratic Party decided last year that they needed to connect with this demographic to close their own profound “gender gap.” The problem was that they didn’t know anything about men and rural men, in particular, meaning that they didn’t have any idea how to reach them. And so, they decided to run Tim Walz (of all people) for Vice President—because he’s one of them, right? I know this sounds like something a right-wing columnist would make up just to make Democrats look ridiculously out-of-touch with people whose votes they were desperate to win, but according to a new book about the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris chose Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly in part because, at interviews, the latter two drank water, while Walz drank Diet Mt. Dew. And the backward, toothless types that wouldn’t know how to count to twelve without the Sesame Street “Pinball” video were certain to find that appealing, right? He grew up in Nebraska and drinks Mt. Dew? Sign us up! (Or at least let us put our “X” on the line where the signature is supposed to go!)

In other, even deeper and more serious ways, the PR campaign waged on behalf of the public broadcasters mirrors the long-term trend among the nation’s political, educational, and media elites to view those who are unlike them as “lesser than,” as simpletons and “deplorables” who are too stupid to know what they really want and really need and, therefore, have to be told those things by their cultural and intellectual betters. Just as PBS and NPR waged a campaign to save their public funding by appealing to the “hidden” interests of rural people who despise them and who consistently vote for elected officials who want to defund them, so the nation’s ruling class has long bemoaned that rural (as well as suburban and ex-urban) voters are staunchly Republican, even though these voters’ real interests should make them Democrats.

More than two decades ago, the journalist Thomas Frank appealed to his fellow leftists’ sense of self-importance by asking (in a book by the same title), “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” Kansans and other rural voters, you see, are too stupid to understand that they shouldn’t be voting for pro-life Republicans who might also cut farm subsidies. Obviously, they should, instead, vote for pro-welfare Democrats, who will take care of them like the Prairie Populists of yesteryear.

Likewise, the mainstream media have created an entirely new genre of stories this past month about stupid Trumpers who voted for budget cuts but now might lose their access to rural hospitals because of Medicaid cuts. “Dumb Trumpers have regrets” is almost inarguably the “story of the summer” for the mainstream media.

All of this reinforces the fact that PBS, NPR, the mainstream media, most of the Democratic Party, and parts of the Republican establishment see themselves as different from and better than their fellow countrymen. They grumble constantly about the “populist” turn in American politics, without it ever crossing their minds that they might be responsible for this turn, their arrogance toward and alienation from the country class is a primary driver of this populism.

PBS and NPR, like so many of the public institutions in this country today, are run of, by, and for the ruling class. This is troubling enough and more than justifies their loss of taxpayer dollars. That they would try to stave off that loss by pretending to care even a little about the country class and its needs only amplifies the disquiet and reinforces the righteousness of the defunding decision.