{"id":9427,"date":"2006-12-23T10:02:15","date_gmt":"2006-12-23T15:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/9427.html"},"modified":"2006-12-23T10:02:15","modified_gmt":"2006-12-23T15:02:15","slug":"margaret-spellings-saves-americas-kids-from-gay-friendly-cartoon-rabbit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/margaret-spellings-saves-americas-kids-from-gay-friendly-cartoon-rabbit\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Spellings saves America’s kids from gay-friendly cartoon rabbit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo<\/a><\/p>\n

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is a petty and mean-spirited person. I’m sure she’s in a good mood these days because it appears she has triumphed over an animated rabbit on PBS named Buster.<\/p>\n

I’ve written<\/a> about Buster before, but for those of you who have forgotten about it, here’s a quick recap: In January of 2005, Spellings blew her top when she learned that PBS planned to air an episode of a popular kids’ program called “Postcards from Buster” that dared to mention that lesbians exist.<\/p>\n

“Postcards from Buster” mixes animation with live action, as its rabbit protagonist travels around the country sampling various cultures in U.S. cities. In a completely harmless episode named “Sugartime!,” Buster journeyed to Vermont, visited a farm and in passing mentioned that a girl who lives there has two moms.<\/p>\n

Spellman pounced immediately. As The New York Times noted<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Education Secretary Margaret Spellings attacked the episode in a letter to Pat Mitchell, the former PBS president, dated Jan. 25, 2005. “Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the life-styles portrayed in this episode,” she wrote. The same day PBS removed “Sugartime!” from its lineup. In the days that followed, the American Family Association, a major Christian conservative organization, orchestrated a campaign of more than 150,000 e-mail messages and letters to Ms. Spellings supporting her position, said Ed Vitagliano, a spokesman for the association.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But Spellings wasn’t done with Buster yet. “Postcards from Buster” had been funded in part with a Ready-to-Learn grant from the Education Department, but in 2006 the department rewrote the grant to make it incompatible with the show’s commitment to diversity, and the program’s producers did not pursue it. Sensing controversy, corporate backers fled from the show in terror. Some foundations stepped up but offered smaller grants. <\/p>\n

New episodes of “Postcards from Buster” should have begun airing in the fall. They never did.
\n
\nTen new episodes have now been completed and will be aired, but that’s 30 episodes shy of a full season.<\/p>\n

Most kids don’t mind watching the same shows several times, but Buster has been in reruns so long some viewers must be losing interest. My own son was a fan of the show but stopped watching because he got tired of seeing the same episodes over and over. <\/p>\n

My guess is this is what Spellings wanted. She has achieved virtually nothing of note as education secretary (other than trying to bury a report that portrayed public education in a positive light), but she sure has vanquished that cartoon bunny. As a legacy, it’s beyond lame.<\/p>\n

But Spellings’ work is not done yet. There is another morally bankrupt animated rabbit that must be dealt with. I speak here of Bugs Bunny, whose fondness for cross-dressing and mayhem is well known. It’s true Bugs isn’t on PBS, but think of the damage he has done to America’s youth for over 50 years now. Yet Spellings remains mum. Could it be she’s afraid, knowing full well what happened to Bugs’ other opponents, notably Yosemite Sam? <\/p>\n

Come on, Margaret. It’s time to take on a harder target. Or are you scared? (Insert chicken noises here.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Guest Post by Morbo Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is a petty and mean-spirited person. I’m sure she’s in a good mood these days because it appears she has triumphed over an animated rabbit on PBS named Buster. I’ve written about Buster before, but for those of you who have forgotten about it, here’s a quick […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9427\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}