“As for those in the World Trade Center, well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break.” – University of Colorado professor, Ward Churchill. He also described the victims of 9/11 as “little Eichmanns.”
FISKING EAGLETON: If anyone deserves it …
SPELLINGS: I didn’t really take Margaret Spellings’ attack on PBS’ Buster very seriously at first. But the more you read about it, the more egregious it is. The series in question takes the bunny Buster across many states and introduces him to many different types of families and backgrounds. From the NYT today:
One episode featured a family with five children, living in a trailer in Virginia, all sharing one room. In another, Buster visits a Mormon family in Utah. He has dropped in on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as well as American Indians and Hmong. He has shown the lives of children who have only one parent, and those who live with grandparents.
This strikes me as pretty diverse – and certainly exposes kids to situations that are not the nuclear family. So why is it okay to present a single parent or no parents but not two gay parents? If Mormons are portrayed, why not gays? Why should young children be exposed to the tenets of Christian fundamentalism but not even learn a simple fact about life in Vermont? The lesbian couple are not front and center in the piece; they are background. They are Americans. And, according to the Bush administration, they must be airbrushed out of the country. Not a good sign.
The Dish 