And I’m becoming more and more convinced they’d never have been allowed to get such a large amount of exposure in today’s political and cultural climate. They would have been too much of a lightning rod for any network, especially one that’s Federally funded like PBS, to base whole segments of a popular show around.
The bastards don’t just want a chilling effect: They’re going for December in Siberia.
well, actually, Postcards from buster is mainly live, not cartoon. Buster just narrorates a bit and puts plot to why theyre talking to people.
hey, when you have twenty channels and TLC is currently on “a Baby story” and you really just need to veg out in front of a tv, it essentially the only thing on.
and it’s a decent kids show. I like how it shows how different people live. Its cute.
And people do live in same sex families, despite some peoples efforts to stop it. And besides, the focus is on the maple syrup, anyways. So it’s educational. In exactly the way it was meant to be. So this is entirely Spellings being anti-gay.
Well, I think it’s more it’s that she has a picture of “what every family wants” and is trying to do her best to serve that concieved populace. It convieniently fits in with what she wants for her family, too.
What bothers me is that she doesnt know about or dosent recognize the other…eh, is two thirds a good estimate?(I think theres a few studies that say about half of americans opose gay marriage, and only about 30% oppose both civil unions and marriage, and thats what i’m basing this estimate on, sorry its only from memory, without a cite) two thirds of the country that doesnt quite want that.
Um, is that a whoosh? Because they’re real humans.
I was going to pit this myself, but I was too upset.
The idea behind Postcards From Buster is that Buster travels around the country and meets real children who live differently from each other. For example, there have been shows with evangelical Christian, Mormon, and Muslim families.
The maple syrup show focuses predominantly on the child and never mentions that the parents are a couple, aside from showing two women doing family-type stuff in the kitchen in passing and eating dinner together.
Postcards From Buster shows REAL CHILDREN and their REAL LIVES! I wish people would stop fucking denying that these children exist! Even if you think homosexuality is evil, how the hell can you treat these innocent children like second class citizens, forced to hush up and pretend that they don’t exist?
C’mon, **luci/b]. You don’t think the only thing they do like bunnies is make maple syrup, do you?
Help me out, here. The show in question does or does not feature:
a) Lesbians
b) Maple syrup
c) Bunnies
d) Canadians
e) Plaid shirts
f) Lumberjacks
g) Sesame Street 1 on 1 same sex action
Before I sign up, I want to make sure I’ll get my money’s worth-so it’s gotta be 4 out of 7.
From the NY Times reporting of this story:
Where was the outcry of Ms. Spellings when these other non-standard families were being shown? Fuck! He even visited Mormons, who we all know are non-standard issue. 
I cannot imagine why anyone would waste time complaining about lesbian syrup-farmers while ignoring all the other mind-rotting, perverted stuff there is on TV. Is she extra upset because federal dollars were involved?
Band na…never mind.
Stranger
(batting big, brown, innocent eyes…)
Why, whatever do you mean?
(As for Mr. Robinson, every word, soon as it came out paperback. Expecially fond of how he plugs worthy artists, like John Koerner, to whom you should send money.)
The more I think about this, the more this pisses me off. From everything I’ve heard, this episode says nothing openly about lesbians. It just visits a REAL kid, as the show does every episode, and mostly talks about her and her farm. She happens to have two mommies, but they are basically in the background.
But that’s not good enough for this Education bitch. No no, you see, gay families are second class. Diversity and learning about other families ends when the parents are gay.
This is the sort of injustice I wonder if conservatives really give a damn about. I mean, I understand all the other reasons you might be for Bush, but don’t you think hiring and tolerating bullshit like this is dick? Why don’t you DO something about it?
Yeah, that’s how I got into Tom Waits. I figured anyone who would write a song named “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis” must be worth a listen. Of course, as soon as I discovered him, he took his music in a direction I don’t care for, but that’s a different story.
[/Cafe Society]
I think it is when they referred to the women as the “two moms” of the kids: http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:Q9T2mzoyJ4YJ:pbskids.org/buster/blog/vt_hinesburg_bl.html+pbs+postcards+buster+vermont&hl=en&lr=lang_en
I noticed you had to use the google cache for that link because PBS, being the paragon of Liberalism that they are, has removed that episode from the website and is not distributing it to their affiliates. Welcome to winter Derleth.
You know, the irony of all this is just delicious.
For decades, some conservatives and libertarians have warned that a large and intrusive government was a threat to freedom. Many liberals, though, proclaimed other priorities (like federal funding of reading programs) and charged forward in making the government ever larger, and ensuring it’s thumbs were in every conceivable pie.
Now, admittedly, many conservatives and Republicans went along for this ride, hoping that their pet projects could get some gravy as well. But the majority of new programs and initiatives were championed by liberals.
It’s now to the point where restrictions on federal spending can affect any individual or organization. The government may be unwilling to completely ban embryonic stem cell research, but they can choose not to fund it. Likewise, this show couldn’t be censored, but it depends on federal funds for its existence. Pull them, and the show goes under.
If the enlightened folks on this board are so disappointed that such results can be achieved, they have only themselves to blame. After all, the reading program that dispenses these funds, the entire Department of Education, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting are entirely their creations. It was liberals who were so shortsighted that they couldn’t see that someone might take control of these programs and do things they don’t favor.
It serves 'em right. If they want programs that show two mommies, or three mommies, or half-a-dozen mommies with a few daddies sprinkled in, they should raise the money and make the shows themselves. Or they can bleat like a baby goat cut off from the nipple.
I’m hearing lots and lots of bleating in this thread.
Since the lion’s share of PBS funding, as we are reminded at pledge time, comes from private sources and not the federal teat we DO “raise the money and make the shows (our)selves,” Mr Moto.
Then you should have no problem doing so without DOE money, or the federal grant provided each year to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Look, I think this decision goes over the top. But I’m loving seeing liberals squirm because a bit of federal money they count on is being threatened.
That strikes me as someone who gave up their First Amendment rights to get federal money. And I don’t have much respect for that stance.
Song for Moto
It’s all the liberals fault, oh! It’s all the liberals fault!
Leprosy, heresies, self-righteous Pharisees
It’s all the liberals fault!
It’s all the liberals fault, oh! It’s all the liberals fault!
From the breakdown of marriage to lascivious carriage
Its all the liberals fault!
It’s all the liberals fault, oh! It’s all the liberals fault!
If a kid has two mommies, you can bet its those Commies!
It’s all the liberal’s fault!..
Mr. Moto: * If they want programs that show two mommies, or three mommies, or half-a-dozen mommies with a few daddies sprinkled in, they should raise the money and make the shows themselves.*
Just forget about trying to get them broadcast on any of the many media outlets that are controlled by conservative media chains like Clear Channel.
The private sector can be just as effective a censor as any government bureaucracy, if not more so. Even with interference from jackasses like Spellings, the programming on PBS is still a whole lot more liberal and open to diverse viewpoints than that of conservative media conglomerates.
I think we’re mixing several questions there, Mr Moto.
First, the libertarian/statist one: Should the government be involved in regulating the affairs of the broadcast media, considering that they are using the publicly-owned airwaves? To what extent? What are the limits between censorship and proper management?
Second, the fiscal one: Should the government underwrite a “public,” educational broadcasting system, when there are commercial ones with which it competes? Along with this, if the federal government advances a proportion of the costs of operating such a system, to what extent does it have a right to intervene in its programming?
Third, and important: Does the government have a right to impose the standards and values held by its leadership on Americans who may have different standards and values?
I think reasonable people can disagree on the answers to any of those questions.
What I do find a tempest in a teapot is the idea that a passing reference to a same-sex couple who is raising children on which a given episode is focused is somehow an “endorsement of their lifestyles”? Is a news report on the recent trainwreck in Glendale an “endorsement of mental illness or drug abuse” since the man in question apparently was suicidal and a drug-user, and they’re reporting about him?
In America 2005 AD some same-sex couples raise children. This is a fact. Children will sooner or later come to find out that this is the case. Is a passing reference to them endorsing what they do in some official way? How so?