CRYSTAL CITY, Virginia. Conceding that its critics may have a point, Public Broadcasting Service President and CEO Paula Kerger announced Friday that the public television network would launch a “bold” diversity and inclusion initiative by hiring a Presbyterian.
Kerger: “Just no Baptists or Catholics, okay?”
“We looked at ourselves and discovered that our employees were ninety-eight percent Episcopalians or Unitarians,” Kerger told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour. “So perhaps it’s time we open the floodgates and hire a Presbyterian, although it wasn’t that long ago in world historical terms that they beheaded members of rival sects and posted the skulls on the gates of Edinburgh, like a tiki lamp from Pottery Barn.”
Burns: “You are getting sleepy–VERY sleepy.”
PBS recently came under fire for allotting a disproportionate amount of airtime and funding to filmmaker Ken Burns, whose deeply-researched documentaries have been hailed as a cure for insomnia. In March over 130 filmmakers signed an open letter asserting that they were just as capable of producing boring content as Burns, a claim that PBS officials initially disputed. “Ken has won five Emmy awards,” said Executive Assistant Vice President for Initiatives and Other Stuff Emily Nostrand. “They don’t hand those little statues out for being creative.”
Presbyterianism, founded on the theological teachings of John Calvin in Scotland, is a mainline Protestant denomination in America, but in its formative years it raised the hackles of Anglicans, Catholics and just about every other religion it came into contact with. Its adherents were stereotyped as humorless, sexless enemies of free thought and inquiry. In an 1822 letter Thomas Jefferson reported that in his village of Charlottesville, where Presbyterians were one of many denominations, “all mix in society with perfect harmony except for the Presbyterians, who won’t even let Methodists come to their after-church coffee hours.”
While admitting that “there are areas where we’re not as strong as we could be,” Kerger wouldn’t say whether PBS’s workforce would be expanded to include other underrepresented groups. “Take Catholics,” she said. “Please.”