The latest PBS adaptation  of Charles Dickens’s classic novel Oliver Twist demonstrates the urgent need for reform of the taxpayer-supported broadcasting service–or an end to taxpayer funding for it.

The temptation to “improve” on classic works of culture seems all but irresistible, especially to the political radicals and social transformers who infest public broadcasting organizations in the United States and Europe. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has long been known as a very aggressive practitioner of efforts at political and social transformation through its partially taxpayer-funded Public Broadcasting System (PBS) for television and its National Public Radio (NPR) network. (more…)

I must have missed a few subtle literary points in college when I was taking a Charles Dickens seminar.

I missed the spot where Fagin, in Oliver Twist, is wearing a gigoondo yarmulke.

Also, blasting right by yours truly—alas, never the best of students—is the part where Fagin abstains from eating pork chops because they’re not kosher.

Who knew that Fagin was an observant Jew? (more…)