Levar Burton angry at Mitt Romney’s attack on PBS
Levar Burton, the former host of the classic PBS educational show “Reading Rainbow,” is totally infuriated with GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney — after Romney threatened to cut PBS funding during Wednesday night’s presidential debate.
According to reports, Levar Burton told media outlet TMZ that Mitt Romney would be stealing an invaluable educational resource from underprivileged children if he decided to cut the funding of PBS. In a statement, Burton said, “I am personally outraged that any serious contender for the White House would target as part of his campaign the children of America in this fashion.”
Levar Burton continued, “Educators across the country, as well as millions of children and adults know that the programming on PBS has been responsible for significant improvements in education, literacy, math, science and life skills for generations of our children.”
“Defunding PBS directly punishes the less fortunate by removing this trusted and extraordinary educational resource available to all.”
Levar Burton then concluded, “On behalf of America’s children, I can’t stay silent. I encourage you to join me in fighting this short-sighted and frankly mean-spirited attack on our children.”
As previous reports have stated, during Wednesday night’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney told debate moderator Jim Lehrer, “I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too (Lehrer’s show is on PBS). But I’m not gonna keep on spending money on things to borrow from China to pay for,” to which Levar Burton fired back, “PBS represents .00016% of our nation’s budget, yet this free resource benefits kids across all economic circumstances.”
Burton, who is best known for playing Chief Engineer Geordi La Forge on “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” hosted the “Reading Rainbow” series during its entire 26-year-long PBS run. He recently introduced a new “Reading Rainbow” iPad app, bringing the series to a new generation of children.