Settle down to watch “George Shrinks” on WPBA with H.o.p. and there it is, a brand new commercial, swear it is (though I could be wrong) which gets down to business with big white script on the screen informing 84% of you see Public Broadcasting as a Safe Haven for your child. They may as well have substituted with footage of Department of Education’s Margaret Spellings, PBS and the Coalition of Vigilante Mom and Pop Justices clubbing poor Buster Rabbit bloody senseless for getting into the maple sugar patch. What’s disturbing is I doubt the message was concocted to reassure people like me that PBS is only doing what the majority wants. Instead the message is crafted for those who have already won, a scramble to beg their pleasure, frothing desperate, a pandering declaration of submission to Bush’s All-Consuming Mandate.
Disgusted, I go check email and find that WPBA has finally gotten around to responding to my protest on their not airing Buster’s Vermont adventure.
There has been a lot of discussion recently about a scheduled episode of
Postcards from Buster titled “Sugartime!” Postcards from Buster is an
animated and live-action children’s series, produced in Boston and
distributed by PBS, that targets early elementary school students. The
series is designed to help children understand and appreciate the rich and
varied cultures that make up the United States. The recent discussion
involved the depiction of same-sex parents in the “Sugartime!” episode.
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After considerable review, PBS made the decision not to include this
episode in the series. It stated, “We recognize this is a sensitive
issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to
introduce this subject to their children in their own time.” As a PBS
member station, we broadcast series as distributed by PBS. Since PBS has
announced that it will not include that episode in the series, WPBA-TV
will not be broadcasting it.
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Karen A. Bell
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These people are as bad as Earthlink’s miserable customer service department which, no matter what you tell them, always responds with a reading of the same tired list of possible fixes (nothing to do with them of course) which they read to you yesterday and the day before and the day before that and the week before that, then send a questionaire asking how they did? Your guess is as good as mine as to why it took Karen Bell’s assistant so long to send out this generic response. I phoned the station on the February 3rd and “We recognize this is a sensitive issue, and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time” was the same thing parroted to me then, which is what is parroted to everyone.
It is the same line that Margaret Spellings feeds when asked about her fanatical clubbing of Buster:
On lifestyle issues, I think it’s appropriate for parents to deal with those and address those as they see fit, in their own way and in their own time…I believe that as a mother, and I believe that as a policy-maker. For the Department of Education or public broadcasting to get into things that are, you know, in a grayer area, is just not something we need to do.
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And there it pretty much is, the whole story. Bush and Spellings’ Department of Education = Public Broadcasting.
How much did sugarcane lobbyists feed the Bush campaign? Because, as everyone knows, there was no sensitive issue to be addressed by parents to children “in their own time” unless the sugarcane industry doesn’t want anyone hearing about maple syrup sugar. Same-sex marriage wasn’t addressed in the show. Buster did inquire, looking at a photograph of the family highlighted, if Gillian was also Emma’s mother and Emma said yes that Gillian was her stepmother and Buster said wow that was a lot of moms.
2000 U.S. Census information shows 30% of households held stepchildren. In otherwords, 30% of households had either a stepmom or stepdad. 30% is a significant share. A great big ol’ share. If anything, that is what the story is here. Emma has a stepparent as does 30% of the population.
Like Spellings’ children. Margaret Spellings is a stepparent. She divorced her first husband, with whom she has four children, in 1997, and remarried to lawyer Robert Spellings in 2001. Margaret Spellings’ children have a father and stepfather.
Since the issue has been clearly shown to be about stepparents, can we ban Spellings from the airwaves as she is married to one?
We recognize Margaret Spellings is a sensitive issue and we wanted to make sure that parents had an opportunity to introduce this subject to their children in their own time.
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The Traditional Values Coalition (Exec. Dir. Andrea Lafferty, Founder Rev. Louis Sheldon is Lafferty’s father) sent out to their supporters an alert that Spellings was being targeted, because of Buster, by, The homosexual activist group “The Respect for All Project†in San Francisco…(which) pushes the homosexual agenda in public schools through “anti-bullying†and “diversity†training videos, workshops and seminars.
Imagine. Anti-bullying videos.
The Traditional Values Coalition offers ministry and counseling resources for “those struggling with same-sex attractions and other gender identity disorders”. It is such a high priority that this aspect of their work is one of 9 navigation links in their “Inside TVC” menu.
The Traditional Values Coalition (a lobbying organization, its sister organization being the Traditional Values Educationi & Legal Institute) gives itself as being 43,000 churches strong.
Andrea is married to Jim Lafferty, former press secretary to Rep. Tom DeLay.
The Traditional Values Coaltion has published Briefing Paper on the Homosexual Agenda, which includes a section titled
You’d think TVC would be howling about Gannongate but I did a search at their website but no articles came up and so far I don’t see them howling.
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