Dr. Dobson is back in the "news" a bit, but this time on a different subject & from another viewpoint. - Please, let parents do their job as parents.
I did a 01-05-05 post entitled "Dr. James C. Dobson can go to hell, the . . . . I'm with the president of the liberal group People for the American Way on this one."
That post was very critical of Dr. Dobson for his recent activities that represent a new level of direct partisan engagement on his part.
He was threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators -- all up for re-election in 2006 -- "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they exercise their right to vote their conscience in the U.S. Senate, in this case, vote to block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
Today Dr. Dobson -- to some extent -- is in part the subject of an article by a member of a the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, which, like The New York Times, are known for a having a liberal slant.
Ready to Throw In The Sponge?
By Ruth Marcus
The Washington Post
January 30, 2005
The folks who got all wiggy over Tinky Winky -- remember him, the purple, purse-toting, purportedly gay Teletubby? -- are now up in arms over another imaginary children's character: SpongeBob SquarePants. And who could resist the temptation to make fun of the alarm-sounders? Not I, certainly -- how else to respond to people who work themselves into a lather over an animated talking sponge? Yet, in an odd way, I also find myself understanding some of what's bothering them.
The precise problem for groups such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association isn't SpongeBob himself, though the irrepressibly sweet sponge does live in a town called Bikini Bottom and is often seen holding hands with his best friend, a pudgy pink starfish named Patrick. The issue, rather, according to Focus on the Family's James Dobson, is that SpongeBob has been drafted (well, if he is gay he couldn't be drafted, actually) for a "pro-homosexual video." The video -- a remix of the disco hit "We Are Family," sung by SpongeBob and other co-opted cartoon characters -- is to be sent to 61,000 elementary schools in March "to speak the message of diversity and tolerance to elementary school children nationwide."
That's exactly the issue for the Dobsons of the world, who manage to find a homosexual in every closet. The American Family Association sounded the alarm on its magazine cover this month in what you might have mistaken for a parody of the genre: "Children's TV unites to launch pro-gay campaign; SpongeBob, Pooh, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, many others enlisted in stealth effort." How stealthy? The video itself contains not a word -- not even a code word -- about homosexuality. But the Web site of the group that produced it -- the We Are Family Foundation -- does contain a link to this problematic pledge: "I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own." This, as Dobson sees it, "crosses a moral line," because it "trumps the authority of mothers and fathers and leaves it in the hands of strangers."
And as simultaneously laughable and scary as I find the uproar over an imaginary invertebrate, I also find myself identifying in part with such Dobsonian angst. For if you peel away his repulsive prejudice against gays and his overheated paranoia, Dobson's stated problems with the video echo the worries of many ordinary parents, even liberal ones, that they are the losers in the culture wars and that they have been supplanted in their role by outside forces.
This phenomenon was brought home to me recently when my elementary school-age children's private school put up a photography exhibit on families with gay members. That wasn't in itself such a big deal; our kids, from kindergarten on, see a video about different kinds of families that features same-sex parents, among others. What discomfited some of us -- many of us, in fact -- was the explicitness of the accompanying text describing families with bisexual and transgender parents and families with a history of incest.
This was a PC bridge too far. One day that week, I was driving the kids home and asked the innocuous question of what they had done in school. "We went up to see the exhibit and learned about transgender families," my 9-year-old answered brightly. "Will was a little confused about how the woman had the baby if she is a man." I held my breath, waiting for the 7-year-old to follow up.
Transgender readers, please understand. If you moved in next door, I'd bring over a casserole and happily explain the whole deal to the kids, without judgment and without hesitation. But is it really necessary, absent such a predicate, to go through all this in elementary school? And whether my reaction is right or wrong, shouldn't this be a decision for me and my husband to make -- not something sprung on us by our school?
This is the way in which I find myself unexpectedly, and somewhat unsettlingly, aligned with the Focusers on the Family. It's not just about how -- and when and from whom -- our children learn about sex. It's also the general coarseness of the culture and the difficulty of shielding our children from the worst of it. Absent the extreme measures of canceling the cable, unplugging the Internet and starting to home-school the kids, even the most vigilant parents can't put up an impenetrable defense against material they'd prefer to keep from their children -- and spotty vigilance is about all I, for one, can muster.
Like many parents, we have staked out a mushy middle ground in the culture wars; like most middle grounds, it is hard to sustain. We disallowed teen-rated video games but made an exception for "The Sims" -- which, it turns out, leads straight down the virtual slippery slope to "The Sims: Hot Date." We ban MTV but permit certain radio stations. Or we did, until, settling in at the computer to write this column, I found my 9-year-old's printout of Eminem lyrics. The sputtering over SpongeBob is silly and worse, but it also touches on our loss of control -- the difficulty, in the real world, of providing parental guidance.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post.
That post was very critical of Dr. Dobson for his recent activities that represent a new level of direct partisan engagement on his part.
He was threatening to put six potentially vulnerable Democratic senators -- all up for re-election in 2006 -- "in the 'bull's-eye' " if they exercise their right to vote their conscience in the U.S. Senate, in this case, vote to block conservative appointments to the Supreme Court.
Today Dr. Dobson -- to some extent -- is in part the subject of an article by a member of a the editorial page staff of The Washington Post, which, like The New York Times, are known for a having a liberal slant.
Ready to Throw In The Sponge?
By Ruth Marcus
The Washington Post
January 30, 2005
The folks who got all wiggy over Tinky Winky -- remember him, the purple, purse-toting, purportedly gay Teletubby? -- are now up in arms over another imaginary children's character: SpongeBob SquarePants. And who could resist the temptation to make fun of the alarm-sounders? Not I, certainly -- how else to respond to people who work themselves into a lather over an animated talking sponge? Yet, in an odd way, I also find myself understanding some of what's bothering them.
The precise problem for groups such as Focus on the Family and the American Family Association isn't SpongeBob himself, though the irrepressibly sweet sponge does live in a town called Bikini Bottom and is often seen holding hands with his best friend, a pudgy pink starfish named Patrick. The issue, rather, according to Focus on the Family's James Dobson, is that SpongeBob has been drafted (well, if he is gay he couldn't be drafted, actually) for a "pro-homosexual video." The video -- a remix of the disco hit "We Are Family," sung by SpongeBob and other co-opted cartoon characters -- is to be sent to 61,000 elementary schools in March "to speak the message of diversity and tolerance to elementary school children nationwide."
That's exactly the issue for the Dobsons of the world, who manage to find a homosexual in every closet. The American Family Association sounded the alarm on its magazine cover this month in what you might have mistaken for a parody of the genre: "Children's TV unites to launch pro-gay campaign; SpongeBob, Pooh, Bob the Builder, Little Mermaid, many others enlisted in stealth effort." How stealthy? The video itself contains not a word -- not even a code word -- about homosexuality. But the Web site of the group that produced it -- the We Are Family Foundation -- does contain a link to this problematic pledge: "I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own." This, as Dobson sees it, "crosses a moral line," because it "trumps the authority of mothers and fathers and leaves it in the hands of strangers."
And as simultaneously laughable and scary as I find the uproar over an imaginary invertebrate, I also find myself identifying in part with such Dobsonian angst. For if you peel away his repulsive prejudice against gays and his overheated paranoia, Dobson's stated problems with the video echo the worries of many ordinary parents, even liberal ones, that they are the losers in the culture wars and that they have been supplanted in their role by outside forces.
This phenomenon was brought home to me recently when my elementary school-age children's private school put up a photography exhibit on families with gay members. That wasn't in itself such a big deal; our kids, from kindergarten on, see a video about different kinds of families that features same-sex parents, among others. What discomfited some of us -- many of us, in fact -- was the explicitness of the accompanying text describing families with bisexual and transgender parents and families with a history of incest.
This was a PC bridge too far. One day that week, I was driving the kids home and asked the innocuous question of what they had done in school. "We went up to see the exhibit and learned about transgender families," my 9-year-old answered brightly. "Will was a little confused about how the woman had the baby if she is a man." I held my breath, waiting for the 7-year-old to follow up.
Transgender readers, please understand. If you moved in next door, I'd bring over a casserole and happily explain the whole deal to the kids, without judgment and without hesitation. But is it really necessary, absent such a predicate, to go through all this in elementary school? And whether my reaction is right or wrong, shouldn't this be a decision for me and my husband to make -- not something sprung on us by our school?
This is the way in which I find myself unexpectedly, and somewhat unsettlingly, aligned with the Focusers on the Family. It's not just about how -- and when and from whom -- our children learn about sex. It's also the general coarseness of the culture and the difficulty of shielding our children from the worst of it. Absent the extreme measures of canceling the cable, unplugging the Internet and starting to home-school the kids, even the most vigilant parents can't put up an impenetrable defense against material they'd prefer to keep from their children -- and spotty vigilance is about all I, for one, can muster.
Like many parents, we have staked out a mushy middle ground in the culture wars; like most middle grounds, it is hard to sustain. We disallowed teen-rated video games but made an exception for "The Sims" -- which, it turns out, leads straight down the virtual slippery slope to "The Sims: Hot Date." We ban MTV but permit certain radio stations. Or we did, until, settling in at the computer to write this column, I found my 9-year-old's printout of Eminem lyrics. The sputtering over SpongeBob is silly and worse, but it also touches on our loss of control -- the difficulty, in the real world, of providing parental guidance.
The writer is a member of the editorial page staff of The Washington Post.
posted by Sid Cottingham | 8:15 AM
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