It seems the traveling, 8-year-old, asthmatic cartoon rabbit who is the title hero of the PBS children's series Postcards from Buster is scheduled to make a stop in New England, where he will visit — uh oh — "a home with lesbian parents."
Zurawik tells us that "the controversial segment — 'Sugartime!' — takes Buster to Vermont where children show him how maple syrup and cheese are made. The focus is on the children except when Buster is invited to dinner by two families headed by lesbian mothers." These women are, that is, the mothers of children who are Buster's friends. (And they are real, live women. Postcards from Buster is a combination of animation and live action. oldstyleliberal assumes Buster's friends are the women's real, live children.)
Not Buster's friend, apparently, is Margaret Spellings, the new secretary of the Department of Education. She "denounced the use of federal funds for" producing Postcards from Buster. Zurawik writes, "Most of the $5 million financing for Buster came from the federal government."
A sizable number of PBS stations have either refused to air the episode or postponed it pending further consideration. When the headline states "'Buster' episode to air," it refers to the 18 or so local PBS affiliates such as WGBH in Boston, New York's WNET, and KQED in San Francisco who will air the episode as scheduled.
oldstyliberal, this blog's proprietor, feels it is "culture war" issues like this one than most challenge his intention to find his way back to ... well, to "old-style liberalism." This is certainly the kind of controversy which never would have arisen in the period from, say, 1960 to 1968, the heyday of the Kennedys and of Martin Luther King.
So he will just have to explore the issue a bit further.
TV critic Zurawik tells us that a strong supporter of the "Sugartime!" episode, Peggy Charren, "a WGBH board member and pioneer in children's TV," claims that "it's about the children, not the parents. What you learn about is maple syrup — how its made — and that cheese comes from cows."
To which defense of Buster oldstyliberal feels he is forced to say, get real! The pre-schoolers at whom the series is aimed have antennae that will unfailingly lock in on the fatherlessness of Buster's friends' families.
In fact, that's what's another Buster defender, Dr. Michael Brody, a psychatrist and expert on children's TV, lauds: that "the very idea of this series was to show diversity." That doesn't mean different kinds of cows, folks. It means different kinds of people.
And it segues into reason number one why oldstyliberal thinks Secretary Spellings was wrong to raise a fuss. Per the article:
The Department of Education grant that funds Buster specifies: "Diversity will be incorporated into the fabric of the series to help children understand and respect differences and learn to live in a multicultural society."
If that's true, then Spellings hasn't a leg to stand on. The mandate to "help children understand and respect differences" doesn't stop at the doors of same-sex households.
So Spellings is technically wrong to overlook the stated rules. But is she wrong in a broader, more overarching sense? Cultural conservatives will, of course, uphold her stance. oldstyliberal, however, will not. He feels the politics of liberty and opportunity extend also to lesbian cheese and syrup farmers in Vermont.
Limits on the tolerance of oddity and diversity, upheld in the name of cultural conservatism, hold people back in our society. They keep people from maximizing their opportunities for making good and getting ahead. Specifically when it comes to gay and lesbian couples, the political fruits of cultural intolerance block legal recognition of the economic rights, such as those of inheritance and community property, that heterosexual couples — formally married or not — routinely enjoy.
oldstyleliberal thinks that's the decisive factor here. We need Buster and "Sugartime!" to help our children become more tolerant than we adults are, to move the society toward letting gays and lesbians alone so they can, in the old Star Trek expression, "live long and prosper."
Admittedly, the cultural conservatives might be in the right, and oldstyliberal wrong, if exposure to tolerant attitudes on homosexuality might lead children into adopting a gay lifestyle of their own, one day. Which it might, if people choose their sexual orientation. If people are non-heterosexual by choice, then we need to think really carefully about possibly influencing them, and thus the culture, away from "straight" sex.
But oldstyliberal has never seen any convincing evidence that people do choose their sexual preferences. In which case, he insists that TV programs that promote "lifestyle" tolerance are just fine for America.
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