Tonight shows why PBS (despite many flaws) needs to be
supported.
POV opens their season with
The Education of Shelby Knox on sex ed in Texas.
Frontline closes their season Tuesday night with Private Warriors, a look at military contractors in Iraq. If Joseph Heller were around to write a novella about the Iraq war, he might have come up with something like tonight's show.
Filmmakers Marion Lipschutz and Rose Rosenblatt spoke about the Education at the international public television conference, INPUT, in May. They said they set out to do a story about sex education, but it took them a long time to find the right story to tell.
They eventually heard about Shelby Knox who was working to change the abstinance only sex education in Lubbuck, Texas. The story evolved over three years to include a fight to allow the gay straight alliance to meet at her school. Knox was interviewed on NOW without Bill Moyers.
Martin Smith who made Private Warriors interviewed (audio & video online) on Democracy Now (Bill Moyers will be on Wed for the hour) and was on Talk of the Nation Tuesday (audio will be online this evening). Also see Aaron Barnhart's piece putting this in context with the current PBS controversy.
This is an excerpt from the Frontline newsletter (which isn't online or I'd link to it)
The tension between these security teams and the military is just one simmering and largely unreported problem in the private side of this war. The problem is reflected in an incident that didn't make it into the film, but which producer/correspondent Martin Smith shared with me:
"It didn't take long for our story to slap us in the face. We had just arrived in Kuwait and were driving to Camp Arijan, southwest of Kuwait City. It's a major staging area for the Iraq war. Captain David Tippett would be greeting us somewhere outside the first checkpoint to clear us in. Tippett's a guy a lot of journalists know well as he has helped hundreds move through Kuwait and over the border into Iraq ever since the early days of the war. He's a savvy public affairs officer, and I knew we were in good hands.
But, just outside the main base gates we hit a long line of trucks. Tippett is on the phone telling us to skip the line and meet him at the gate. We pull out of the line-up and move down the left lane. But, out of nowhere, two black Suburbans with tinted windows bear down on us forcing us onto the left shoulder. Armed guards jump out.
The guards work for a Fort Worth, Texas private security company CSA
(Combat Support Associates), which, I learn, has the contract to protect
the base. We get Tippett on the phone to get these guys off our backs.
But the fun and games were just beginning. By the time we get to the
gate and shake hands with the captain, we're already late and our first
appointment on the base is threatening to cancel. We get out of our car
and march over deep gravel up to a small trailer park of offices to get
our ID's.
Next, I hear Tippett begin to raise his voice at one of the CSA guards,
"They are my guests, they are approved." Our names are not on the list
of visitors. Tippett wants the guard to call an army officer on base but
the guard refuses. It's an army base; Tippett is a captain.
By now, Tippett is yelling, "This is an army base! These are my guests!
Call the base commander!"
"We don't do that," says the CSA guard.
"Well, goddamn it, what if a bomb went off out here? You wouldn't call
the base commander?" asks Tippett.
"We don't talk with the army. We call our office," replies the guard.
There's always a silver lining. Because I'm thinking it could be part
of our story. We can't even get onto an army base with an army escort.
Then, in the middle of Tippett's argument, sirens go off. We're told,
"You gotta go, the dog sat down." We're herded, along with hundreds of
imported laborers also waiting to get onto the base, out into the desert
.. a few hundred yards away from the gate. We stand for an hour or two
under a rising desert sun. One of the K-9's sniffed explosives and, as
trained, sat down. We never did get on the base that day."