And so it begins. The Bush Administration shakes it's finger angrily in the direction of PBS as Margaret Spellings, the newly-minted Secretary of Education, lets it be known that in her world, there are no federally-funded children's television programs with homosexuals on it. Or rather, there shouldn't be. Or rather, Despite the fact that PBS strives to show the diversity of the United States by featuring families that all children may conceivably have, we have decided that not all children deserve to be validated in this way. Just hide the homos or we may stop funding you.
Okay, I may be overacting a bit, (maybe she thought that because the episode was called "Sugartime" there might be illicit displays of affection) but this does unsettle me. If one of the first things that the new Secretary of Education does is threaten an institution like PBS because she isn't personally comfortable with something, where do you go from there? Only up, I hope.
I will say that I understand that PBS had decided to remove the show before Spellings started squalling, but in some ways I have a hard time believing it because it was shot nearly a year ago. Why pull it now? What makes something on that show unacceptable now that was okay last March when it was filmed?
I love PBS; before cable it was really the only place on television to find out about the actual world. How other people live, what their experiences were. Growing up in Nebraska I craved otherness, sure there was something out there aside from the white, emotionally repressed, politically conservative people I was raised around. And PBS showed me that there was.
I don't know what I'd do if I had a child and we saw a children's show that featured a polygamous family group, or one that practiced polyamory (which I don't necessarily think is wrong; I just don't feel it's a good type of relationship for children to grow up around). I would be hard pressed to explain what my children were seeing to them, but I would. As carefully and as calmly as I could. Because that's what you have to do. Because that's how the world is now; people can and do feel comfortable living in it in all kinds of ways. Which is overall a good thing.
While I am not completely sure that W and his ilk could take down PBS, I don't like the way the agenda for their "mandate" seems to include making children of gays and lesbians (or any child, for that matter) feel invisible. Taking away an image of a gay family does not erase them from society, the same way that abstinence education (which is cheerfully Federally-funded, or should I say blessed?) does not decrease the likelihood that teens will have premarital sex. It's just more of the turtle behavior that the Bush administration encourages, which isn't the actual world. My PBS affiliate is showing Postcards From Buster tomorrow, and my TiVo is at the ready. I'll watch it, and I'll be watching you, Dub. Don't mess with my PBS.
Book of the Night: Where She Came from: A Daughter's Search for Her Mother's History, by Helen Epstein
Posted by kath at February 1, 2005 07:47 PM