JamesB3 noted in his
diary last night that Margaret Spellings, Bush's new education secretary, was putting pressure on PBS to pull an episode of "Postcards from Buster" (an "Arthur" spin-off).
The premise of the series is that Buster Bunny is traveling around the country with his dad, an airline pilot, and each episode shows him in a new location.
The "controversial" episode shows Buster in Vermont where, according to the AP article, Buster will see farm life, sugar maples, and lesbians (I think this is what has me thinking that there is an element of strange hillarity about this whole thing--the AP article was sort of deadpan about it too).
Yes yes, I'm outraged, but I'm also bemused by this. Vermonters, did you realize that your lesbians have become tourist attractions, sort of like your cows? (I guess people in the Castro or other similar neighborhoods know what it's like to have people be "living gay tourist attractions"). And anyway, as Howard Dean reminds us, people in Vermont are used to seeing "unioned" couples and no longer pay them much mind.
Also, does Margaret Spellings realize that gay characters and gay couples have been pretty prevalent on TV for at least a couple of decades now? And let's not forget that books like Heather Has Two Mommies have moved on to "classic" status, they've been around for so long.
But I have to admit, somehow children's programming does seem like the final frontier. This is the territory that people in the past used to gloss over with "That's uncle John's 'friend'" etc. It seems to me that this is a good way to break the ice in a matter-of-fact sort of way, without having to do an afterschool special on it.
Maybe it's the optimist in me, but I'm sort of encouraged by this. When in the past would anyone have dared portray gay or lesbian couples in a television show explicitly for children in such a matter of fact way? I do hope that individual PBS stations press to be able to show the episode.