twistedlibrarian writes “Eleven-year-old Emma must wonder what’s so shameful about her family. All she did was tell an animated rabbit named Buster about “my mom and Gillian, who I love a lot.â€?
Emma’s exchange with Buster is less than 30 seconds of a 30-minute “Postcards From Buster� episode about making syrup and cheese in Vermont. But even fleeting images of families with two mommies (another two-mom family also makes a brief appearance) was enough to trigger a warning letter from Education Secretary Margaret Spellings.
Funding, what kids think, and other stuff
It’s a shame that what this is really coming down to is that PBS is afraid of losing funding… and a segment of the population that would have at least some protections under the law is seemingly getting none right now.
I know pretty much what this is going to look like to most eight year olds anyway… the same way it looks to my 32 year old sister in law with Down’s Syndrome, who’s mom lives with her girlfriend.”Mom’s best friend…” So? They live together. They hang out together. They’re best friends that do everything together.
I have only seen one episode of Buster. I am by no means an expert in all things Buster. That being said… Everything in that episode was handled gently, and on an age appropriate level. Kids don’t much care about sexual orientation, I’ve found (until they hit puberty of course). That probably isn’t even going to be a blip on the radar.
VT
Vermont Public Television is showing this episode next month. I think our senator Jim Jeffords said it best ‘Of all the challenges we face in education, Buster Bunny’s visit to Vermont is not one of them. It’s too bad that people can take a sweet story on maple sugaring and turn it into something so sour.’
Re:VT
It is too bad, and yet the people who made the episode felt the need to introduce a highly controversial topic and do just that. Shame on them.
Re:VT
Shame of them? LOL, I can’t agree with that. Having a small 30 second spot in a half hour program that shows someone living with same gender parents is a cause for shame? That is how some people live. Like it or not. Shame on our adminstation in making a big deal over nothing. I doubt, as has already been pointed out, that anyone would even really notice. Except for those people who are looking for this everywhere they can, and evidently enjoy being scandalized. Very nice families have this arrangement. I’m sorry that it’s too much to ask that a bone be thrown to them on occasion showing that some kids have two mommies. Or two daddies. And evidently aren’t malnourshied and abused and seem as happy and well adjusted as any other child.
Re:VT
Well, if you’re Bill O’Reilly, you assume that now you have to discuss with your children exactly was is involved in homosexual sex. Because, as far as I can tell, when you talk about same-gender parenting, that is the first thing they think about: “OMG, think of the filthy things they are doing in bed.”
Bill O’Reilly’s website
Re:VT
“Having a small 30 second spot in a half hour program that shows someone living with same gender parents is a cause for shame?”
Considering how hot a topic it is, for someone to deliberatly try to sell their view of it in a child’s program is in fact, yes, cause for shame.
Re:VT
I guess the problem I have with your logic is that it becomes a form of a Heckler’s Veto. As long as people make enough noise, get upset enough, the subject is too “controversial” and children should be shielded from it. It’s not enough that they can pass their own values onto their children. Select their own programming that supports those values, but they want to force those values on to all of the other viewing public. Shame on them.
Re:VT
make enough noise? 11 states passed bans on gay marriage in the last election and that’s noise?
I think you have the arguement backwards. As long as people make enough noise, get upset enough, say things like ‘its everywhere’ or ‘it doesn’t really affect you’ then anything and everything suddenly beceomes okay. Welcome to the liberal way.
BFD
I am not a proponent of same gender marriage (and I have no idea if the two syrup makers are married) but does it really matter. Now if I were the producers of the program I perhaps would have left a few seconds of dialogue out, but I am not and I am not certain that they left it in to make a ‘statement’ but even if they did can’t we just ignore it.
This is a children’s’ show I doubt any of them care if the family has lesbian parents. If their parents were dinosaurs or wolves then they might notice but lesbians, big deal.
I like the Teletubbies because they have a little vignette about some aspect of a child’s day. Frankly these are better television than 90% of the crap we are fed daily. I hate Barney because it is cloyingly sweet and the brain washed children appearing in the show disgust me. Children should not be choreographed. So children’s’ programming, especially children’s programming produced in the US does have some agenda – generally the agenda set forth by the NEA- the teachers unions- who are doing the greatest disservice to our children by their pushing social policies over education.
So, big deal some kid has two mommies. At least they are not beating their kids, or pulling out their toenails with pliers like parents in Florida. At least they have jobs are not living off the dole. At least they care about their child unlike so many parents I see regularly who dump their kids off at the library or fail to follow instructions for the care of their ill or injured children I see as a nurse.
I like syrup and I like cheese, I wonder if they have an online store; I’d buy some lesbian cheese or lesbian syrup… I guess it is the same as all other cheese and syrup.
I try to live my life doing what I think is right. I don’t tell others how to live theirs unless they ask. (Voting for a particular candidate or issue is being asked.) In the overall scheme of things the fact that people are lesbians is not very important; trendy but not important. Some people take on these roles to be different or ‘counter-culture’ in the hope that it will in some way benefit them. The syrup ladies are not lesbian celebrities, but Ellen Degeneris is. The syrup ladies just want to sell groceries; Degeneris wants to trade on being a lesbian. I much prefer that people not push their agenda on me and I resent those that feel I am not accepting of those that are ‘different’ from me. Let me clarify this: You are unique… just like everyone else.
So let PBS have the occasional lesbian on, or anyone else from the GBLT sandwich; that is not what I am withholding my donation this year. I am withholding my fifty bucks because I’m a librarian and my salary is half what it was last year. I’m withholding my donation because I’m poor.
O’Reilly
Well, when you talk about Bill O’Reilly, the first things I think of are phone sex and falafel.
BTW, did anyone see the Gilmore Girls last week, with the kid who kept saying “My mom’s a lesbian”? I’m assuming the writers were inspired by the Buster thing.
Re:VT
We’re not talking about gay marriage. We’re talking about gay families. They are related issues, but people who are against gay marriage are not necessarily against gay families.
Re:VT
Well ain’t that the mother of all hair-splitting
Re:VT
Well, coming from one of the states that passed an anti-gay marriage amendment, that was one of the distinctions that was being made. That it was not anti-gay per se, and was not intended to punish same-sex families. To paraphrase the Who: “The Hair-splitting on the Left, is now a hairsplitting on the right.”
Re:VT
If they said it then it was a dumb thing to say on their part. One doesn’t justify the other however.