Good news for all those worried that the Trump-era GOP’s defunding of National Public Radio in the most recent federal budget might lead to the spontaneous combustion of human civilization: They’re doing just fine! In fact, better than that: As it turns out, the natural American spirit of charity — to be specific, donations from two billionaires — has bailed them out and then some.

Connie Ballmer (wife of Clippers owner and professional dancer Steve Ballmer) has decided to use her considerable bride-price to donate $80 million to the theoretically beleaguered radio network. Another, anonymous, donor has chipped in a further $33 million (penny stakes, relatively speaking). That totals a smooth $113 million haul in one fishing trawl, and all for the goal of “ensuring NPR transforms its technology to meet the needs and serve the interests of public media audiences on whatever platforms or devices they may seek it.” Why, with such specifically contoured goals as that, you can rest assured it won’t be used as a general-purpose slush fund. (But then again these people knew what they were wading into: I hope both donors got something slightly better than the branded coffee mug I got when I foolishly chipped in $40 back in the day.)

The more important point to be made — as someone who, as it turns out, wrote a surprising amount about the descent of NPR (and PBS, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as a whole) in my early days here — is that what conservatives always argued would happen if you cut funding for public broadcasting has indeed happened: nothing at all. They’re doing fine! What limited audience NPR had (it no longer includes me) was always willing to subsidize it. NPR never needed our taxpayer money after all. It was all a parasitic grift, a lobbying yelp, the literal — forgive me, but I am about to cite Jim Morrison — scream of the butterflies. These people merely wanted a guaranteed pipeline to taxpayer funding and the nominal imprimatur of “national” agenda-setting and news-making authority.

They still have their nominal brand. But they never needed your money, or mine. And thus the charade is revealed: All we needed to do was cut the spigot of free taxpayer money off to get rich leftist billionaires to cough up countless millions to keep “National” Public Radio afloat. How utterly appalling was it that, for decades, progressives screamed that they needed all of America to subsidize their one-party propaganda, when cash cows were always going to step up once the bluff was called?

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