WEBER: She tried to walk a middle road here and say, OK, she's not going to distribute the show. She's also taking flak from the left because the left believes that they want shows like that to be aired. She is taking flak from the right clearly. WEBER: Well, what's interesting to me, Bill, about this is that she has actually - she's in a no-win position. And then she's taking flak from the left. She washed her hands like Pontius Pilate. WEBER: And what she said was she's not going to distribute Buster. She had power to say no Buster under the PBS banner, period. O'REILLY: I don't want to play these semantic games with anybody - not you or anybody. Weber, Pat Mitchell could chuck GBH right out of the PBS system if she wanted to, OK? VANDEN HEUVEL: The Democratic Party is not in disarray over the moral values issue.ĬONWAY: In a cartoon on PBS? That's ridiculous.įrom the February 16 edition of FOX News' The O'Reilly Factor: VANDEN HEUVEL: So why not represent the diversity of America on our television screens? KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL ( The Nation editor): Kelly, do you have lesbian friends? Do you have lesbian friends? I try to protect my kids from outside, external influences corrupting their minds and their bodies.” It's regular Americans standing up and saying, “I fight hard all day. They don't want their kids looking at a cartoon with a bunch of lesbian mothers.Īre you attacking this nation's parents? It's not Jerry Falwell writing letters to PBS. It's people saying not right versus left, but right versus wrong. Did you not read the last election results? Same-sex marriage failed in places like Oregon and Michigan, which Kerry handled - he carried handily. Katrina, this is why your party is in complete disarray, because you just don't get it. Mitchell announced on February 15 that she will not seek a third three-year term as president and CEO when her contract ends next year, but said her decision had “absolutely nothing” to do with the controversial Buster episode.įrom the February 16 edition of MSNBC's Scarborough Country:ĬONWAY: This endless banter about - the endless banter about the right wing, the right-wing, the Christian right, the Christian right. The Los Angeles Times reported on January 28 that "lthough PBS won't distribute an episode of a children's program featuring a gay couple, local affiliates may air it." As a January 28 New York Times article noted: “Like the grown-ups in most of the episodes, the lesbian mothers in the 'Sugartime!' segment are mainly background.” )Īs Media Matters for America has noted, PBS said it decided not to distribute the episode to its affiliates “a couple of hours before” it was criticized by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, according to a Washington Post article. (In the Bible, Pilate presided at the trial of Jesus and gave the order for his crucifixion, then washed his hands in front of the crowd that demanded Jesus's crucifixion and said: “I am innocent of this man's blood. ” O'Reilly also stated that Mitchell “washed her hands like Pontius Pilate” regarding PBS' decision to not distribute the episode. On FOX News Channel's The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly compared Buster's visit to the Vermont families with lesbian parents to visiting “a bigamy situation in Utah” or “an S&M thing in the East Village. But recent polling data, as Media Matters for America has documented, contradicts Conway's claims about the level of acceptance towards homosexuality in the United States. On MSNBC's Scarborough Country, Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway asserted that it's not an issue of “right versus left, but right versus wrong” and that people “don't want their kids looking at a cartoon with a bunch of lesbian mothers.” Conway cited recent state-level same-sex marriage bans recently passed in Oregon and Michigan - states that went for Senator John Kerry in the 2004 presidential election - to back up her claim that "t's not the right wing," but rather “regular Americans” who don't approve of homosexuality and PBS's depiction thereof. As The Washington Post noted, “In other episodes, Buster has met Mormons in Utah, the Hmong in Wisconsin, people from the Gullah culture in South Carolina, an Orthodox Jewish family and a Pentecostal Christian family.” The Buster episode titled “Sugartime!” features an animated rabbit visiting the children of two real-life families with lesbian parents in Vermont to learn how maple syrup is made. Following PBS president and CEO Pat Mitchell's February 15 announcement that she plans to resign from PBS, conservatives continued to attack a controversial episode of PBS' Postcards from Buster for its depiction of lesbian couples.
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