I would look at the factual accuracy of their claims. If their claims were accurate, then that’d be the extent of my disapproval. If their claims were factually inaccurate, then I’d question why factual inaccuracies were being broadcast with my tax dollars.
If there were any controversy about the factual accuracy of their claims, I’d fall back to the peer-review scientific method.
I would not base a formal objection on moral grounds.
Daniel
I might rant about the idioticy in the Pit.
Oh, go fuck yourself with a serrated iron dildo.
I have always been in favor of both small government and complete personal liberty. Your kneejerk bashing of liberals' and democrats’ is simply moronic because it ignores people like me who fought, and continue to fight, the growth of all government, not just the growth of the police state or the growth of socialism.
In other words, you are so ignorant of the political landscape it’s a wonder you actually know who’s president.
I caught an interview with the Secretary of Education and one of the women shown in this episode before I left for work this morning on ABC’s morning show. They also showed some of the episode in question. While I wasn’t paying complete attention the footage shown looked inoquous enough.
Here’s what struck me. Spellings said she objected to the episode because of the “sexualization” of our children. Is showing a lesbian couple going about their daily routine somehow more sexual than showing a heterosexual would be? I’m pretty sure there’s more to a lesbian marriage than sex, just as there is to a heterosexual marriage. The other thing that struck me is they had a shot of a cartoon rock band and the drummer was a female rabbit (I say “female” because she had decent-sized breasts) playing the drums in a halter top. Is this somehow not sexualizing our children while showing a woman in a sweatshirt and jeans who happens to be a lesbian is? I’m genuinely confused.
One of the rules I learned on the playground is kids who are different are likely get picked on. I learned this when I went home to toad-in-the-hole, rather than meatloaf. To me, one of the essential roles for society as a whole which includes not only teachers, but parents, churches, and adults in general is to teach kids that it’s possible for someone to be different from them, but still be a neat, likable, human being. In the introduction to the segment, the host on ABC mentioned that among the “different” families Buster had visited in the past had been a devoutly religious family. Now, I can see why someone in favor of traditional morals would be supportive of that, but it still boggles my mind that such a person would refuse to see that tolerance extended to others. No, on second thought, it doesn’t. It goes back to the old “I said nothing when they came for X because I wasn’t X” mentality, and that’s a shame.
CJ
Aaiiieee! Yeah, I agree with you. What you missed in that quote is that I was giving my impression of the view that I thought Mr Moto was attempting to convey. Sorry 'bout that!
I salute you for your consistent support of the principle of free speech.
Quite frankly, I think you’re the minority. But you’re to be congratulated on having a consistent view and sticking to it…
Sorry. I never claimed to be a full-blown libertarian, and nobody who reads my postings would confuse me with one.
I can admire Albert Jay Nock and agree with many of his points while simultaneously disagreeing with others he made.
Polycarp, I was specifically referring to what folks like elucidator would do with their pledge money. I’m willing to bet he doesn’t belong to the Moral Majority or the NRA, not only because he doesn’t support them, but also because he doesn’t want his dues used for purposes he doesn’t agree with.
Is he censoring these groups by not doing so, and would he be censoring PBS if he stopped pledging funds? He has this curious view that cutting off funding entails censorship.
Now, Ms. Spellings has a responsibility to allocate the funds of her department in a way that advances governmental goals and policies. If, in her view, that entails removing funding from a certain PBS program, that is right and proper. We may complain about the result, but we can’t call it censorship. All it is is an accounting decision.
I don’t believe the liberal belief in free speech is content dependent, and mine certainly isn’t. However, the decisions liberals make with their own and with the government’s money certainly is content dependent. Conservatives decide the same way, and rightly so. Now, if this bothers you enough that you want to produce programming unencumbered by such considerations, there are other avenues of funding and support available in many cases.
Right there is where we have a problem. Yeah, liberals tend to spend government money for what they believe government ought to do, without references to whether their opponents think that is a valid use of funds, and so do conservatives.
But “government goals and policies” does not equate to “things the Bush Administration thinks are icky.” Remember that we have a couple in Vermont as Ms. Spelling’s initial objection here. In other words, she’s saying that depicting a legally constituted family, in passing, in a show predominantly on maple-sap products, is an endorsement of something that she happens to object to, or her boss does, so she’s entitled to threaten funding on those grounds?
Think that through – it’s as much coercion as the “you can make the speed limit whatever you want, but no Federal highways revenue sharing if your decision isn’t 55” was.
What are government goals and policies, then?
Exactly. I can’t think of one federally enacted initiative that is designed to support gay couples. OTOH, there is a clear federal statute designed to prohibit the extension of heterosexual marriage bennefits to gays (ie, DOMA). A government official, trying to determine the federal government’s position on this matter would reasonably conclude that this is not a subject the government wants to actively support. note: It’s important to consider federal policy here as we are talking about federal dollars.
If a domestic partners bill were to pass at the federal level, then it would a different matter entirely. That would be a clear indication that federal policy was to ACTIVELY support gay unions.
Again, I want to emphasize that I am fully in support of gay rights, including gay marriage. But the issue here is not what I think, but what the country as a whole thinks, and how an administration official should act to support the people whom she serves.
VT and CA both have extensive Civil Union laws on the books. If those states want to use state funds along the lines of what we’re discussing here, I think that would be entirely apporpriate. We’re just not there at the federal level yet.
Umm – “Your guided tour of the Molehill Mountains will be conducted by none other than the Secretary of Education!”
We have a situation where a kid, in a kid’s show, is taken to Vermont to see how maple syrup is made. While there, he meets another kid, who, it’s mentioned in passing, has two mommies.
From this, you’re going to construct an elaborate discourse on the Federal support or lack thereof for same-sex couples?
The kid, it was noted, has parents who are divorced. Therefore the entire program must constitute an attack on the institution of marriage, endorsing, as it does, the idea that parents can be divorced from each other!
While we’re at it, let’s pick up on Fred MacMurray, who by adopting his youngest son’s best friend when he was orphaned back in a 60s sitcom, was clearly a pedophile grooming the boy for his nefarious schemes.
And clearly reporting that guy in Glendale who left his Jeep on the railroad tracks is an endorsement of suicide!
God, this depredation of the airwaves by displaying things as they are and not the ideal conditions (in the mind of our President) that they should be must end!
Please note, whatever defense I make of Secretary Spellings is rooted solely in the belief that, while I believe her decision wasn’t a good one, it was properly hers to make.
If anybody’s rights were infringed, it is because of the huge effects federal spending can have. In the case of the Department of Education, there can be no question where blame for this properly lies.
From this history of the Department of Education:
The NEA, Carter, Ribicoff, Magnuson, Humphrey, Pell, Nunn - gee, look at that. Not a Republican politician or organization in the bunch.
Interestingly, PBS had already come to the same conclusion as Spellings. From the Washington Post:
The two rabbits, both named Buster, are of different taxonomies.
The aforementioned Buster, surname of Baxter, is a humanoid rabbiton. Appearing on the television programs Arthur and Postcards from Buster, he is more humanlike than most cartoon rabbits on television. He is also older than the other Buster, having appeared in the Arthur book series which dates back to the 1970s.
The other mentioned Buster, surname of Bunny, is a cartoony semi-humanoid rabbiton. He is a sort of straight man to the more wild and out-there Babs Bunny (unrelated), and both appear to be inspired by their mentor, Bugs Bunny (also unrelated).
Of course, people with similar names is nothing new. In the Arthur world, the intelligent Brain (real name: Alan) shares his name with a plotting cartoon mouse (real name: Brain); and Arthur himself shares his name with a lovable drunk portrayed by Dudley Moore in the film of the same name.
Join us next time for our next study in the series: Cartoon Character Immortality: Just Lucky or Blessed by God?
Yikes! I never thought of the show in that light. From Uncle Charley right on down to the dog-that show was a hotbed of guy-on-guy action. How smoothly they slid in that subliminal message! :smack:
from the Advocate online
I heard with Romeo and Juliet, they didn’t want kids to get any crazy ideas!
I’ve been right here,mr.moto , under my rock-with my three kids and the cat. My point is that now the attacks on kid’s programming seems more pernicious and strident–maybe that is just the party in power. And why start with kiddy shows? Methinks this is grandstanding on the part of the Reps–it’s “look! we have ‘traditional’ values!” spin shit.
Shall we go back to the days where only white, nuclear families were allowed on TV?–and go back to the twin beds etc like the Ricardo’s and the Petrie’s had…
Shouldn’t TV reflect age appropriate reality to kids? G/L couples with kids is a reality. Don’t they deserve face time-- even on a cartoon?
A RL friend said that she agrees with Spellings b/c “it’s up to the parents to present diversity to kids”. On the face of it, that sounds good.
I could beat the bushes in my school district and never come up with a G/L couple with a kid–much less ones that make maple syrup! TV and other media are great ways to expose kids to other worlds. I live (sadly) in a white bread world, where most of the moms still stay at home. It is very much a time warp around here. If anything, we need MORE stuff like this on TV-not the sensationalized crap but real people, living real lives, regardless of orientation, religion, race etc.
You’d be surprised. My son wasn’t the only kid in his kindergarten class with gay parents when we lived in Texarkana.
I am sure they are probably there–but I do not know them. There are 3000 kids in my daughter’s HS. No way do I know all, most or many of the parents.
In the grade school–900 kids, same again.
I don’t care if there are G/L couples with kids or not here. I would find it distasteful to go looking for said couple and drag them over to my house, just so my kids can see that they are just like everybody else. That’s why TV is good for stuff like this–we don’t know any Mormons, either, but my youngest found out about them via the show.
I wrote a letter to my PBS affiliate, praising the show and requesting that they air this episode; given the audience, here(Chicago) , I am confident that it will air. I also stated that I depended on PBS to provide diversity in it’ s programming as it relates to social mores, and if it did not, I would no longer support PBS.
I feel like PBS is in a vice, here, but felt I had to take a stand.
that’s vise, not vice!
Oy.
:smack: