Heaven forbid children should be exposed to other children in other places! That might foster understanding and compassion and all those other nasty thing.
What happens to a children’s public television show after it has been attacked by the secretary of education, pilloried by conservatives, then abandoned by its underwriters? In the case of “Postcards From Buster,” it manages to return, belatedly but unbowed, for a second season.
[…]
In “Postcards From Buster” documentary footage of children from different cultures is combined with animation of Buster and his friends.
[…]
most adults probably first heard of Buster in January 2005, midway into the show’s first season, when word got out that an episode about maple sugaring, called “Sugartime!,” would feature children in a Vermont family with two moms.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.
Perhaps surprisingly, this season continues to deal with hot-button issues. In an episode being shown today, Buster visits Fort Leonard Wood, an Army post in Missouri, to meet the family of a father who is stationed in Iraq. On Jan. 29 Buster will learn about the Mexican border, traveling with children to Tijuana from San Diego to meet their pen pals. And in the last show of the season, scheduled for Feb. 19, Buster revisits some children from the first season, whose homes in Louisiana were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina.
Simple, stop government funding of PBS and the problem will be solved.
I think it’s great. About time we stop shielding kids and let them know what the “real world” is about.
Simple, stop government funding of public schools and the problem will be solved. So say the simple-minded.
Yeah, that open-minded tolerant shit is for commie pinko faggots!
Maybe if we give all the PBS funding to Fox News we’ll get a fair and balanced discssion. Ha!
Seriously, the problem will go away when the religious right gets its butt out of politics and back into faith and living a christian life.
What would Christ, love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, think of the Neo-Con religious right? Somehow most Christians in America today practice few if any teachings of he whom they claim to accept as Savior.
Hypocritians, more like it.
Has anyone else noticed that the people who want to privatize PBS and let the market sort it out are usually the same ones who wants the FCC to take control and shut down all the smut and violence on private broadcast/satellite/cable TV and radio?!
#6, just because you found some mixed-up Christians doesn’t mean we’re all so mixed-up. The population of Christians is not so much different from that of Muslims. Most go about living their daily lives with some degree of reverence, and a few go off the deep end in a direction that flies in the face of some of the most obvious teachings of their literature – and some of those Christian extremists have TV programs.
“Has anyone else noticed that the people who want to privatize PBS and let the market sort it out are the same ones who wants the FCC to take control and shut down all the smut and violence on private broadcast/satellite/cable TV and radio?!”
Ummm no. I would like to privatize PBS and I would like to shut down the FCC as well. Thus the market can decide what it wants without any government force.
“Public” Broadcasting Network is using a share of all taxpayer’s money to push a minority message. Put it on ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, Cartoon Network or MTV and there wouldn’t be a squeek. Advertisers would be paying the bill.
Maybe PBS could silence the critics by showing Eddie Eagle episodes with tax payer Dollars!
I used to see quite a few Ted Nugent shows on one of our PBS stations…he drew huge donations during their beg weeks, and he’s about as far-right as they get. The other ‘outdoorsman’ shows do very well in this part of the country, too.
Making sure the minority has a voice is not without precedent…the founding fathers were concerned that the majority would completely squash the minority and build in some safeguards to prevent it. Just because you don’t agree with the message that doesn’t mean it should be silenced. But anyway, jst who is this minority you refer to, 10? The US is pretty much 50:50 these days…
#11, ok, but the government ensuring that everybody has equality under the law is not the same thing as it providing a taxpayer funded soapbox.
#9. “I would like to privatize PBS and I would like to shut down the FCC as well.”
Thanks Major Jizz, you raised a good point. With so many fundamentalist wackos in the Republican party I sometimes forget there are actually some true Conservatives left. I’ve changed my original comment to reflect that.
Wow they had to have expected some controversy, after all PBS is all about unbias opinion, and we know that the far right and the white house are all about that. Though I am worried about the mexican border episode, does he get postcards from people living on the border? Or ilegal immigrant sympathizer’s. Keep with it though.
What would Christ, love thy neighbor and turn the other cheek, think of the Neo-Con religious right? Somehow most Christians in America today practice few if any teachings of he whom they claim to accept as Savior.
The problem is so few ‘christians’ are “Christians”… most of the loud ones should be termed “Pauline Yahwists” – they believe in the God of the Old Testament (Sodom & Gommorah, The Flood, killing forty kids with bears….) and Paul, as is easily noted by the quotes they use. You’ll very rarely find a Jesus quote.. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts.. but often find Saul/Paul or the Old Testament….
Besides, I suggest that Saul was a GREAT undercover cop who joined the early Jesus Followers to ‘destroy from the inside’.
J/P=?
Very entertaining,
And love the Grammer.
But if they REALLY want something OFF the air….KILL BARNEY, PLZ.
I want my kids to know the World, and understand peoples differences, BUT also to be safe. This candy coated World of a Dinosour, is going to get some kid Kidnapped, and worse.
I wish you Christian phobics would quit trying to stereotype 80% of the American population that attends church on Sunday. You sound both silly and small minded. And you Christian academics sound smart but that intelligence has killed your capacity for living as a Christian. Trying praying and then analyzing. It does not work the other way around.
Polycomment:
Grammer? We don’t need no stinkin’ grammar. Of not so I’ve noticed.
PBS. Privatize it. That will put it off the air. Then privatize the schools so everybody can home school. Then you can teach your kid any fool thing you want. And the cops; lots of folks would like a shiny car, a riot gun, and a 50mm hand gun. And highway construction. Keep to your own home town. Disband the army, and the government. Issue the leftover weapons to private citizens. Let ’em settle their differences idiot to idiot, in the street outside the saloon.
Not that I want to sound like a radical or something.
Buster
The general feeling around this blog is that the Religious Right should “get it’s butt out of politics.” Well the RR is made up of people most of whom I disagree with but they have as much right to have their butt in politics as anyone else.
#13 SN, I don’t blame you… There aren’t any true Conservatives left in the government. It’s mostly just some sort of Communists with different styles to their propaganda. This is exactly why I started to support third parties.
#20, yes, the Goldwater conservative movement has been on life support for quite a while now.
A lot of PBS programming wouldn’t have a hard time making it on a regular sponser type network. Some of the stuff is excellant. Some of it sucks and only see’s the light of day because of goverment funding.
But, just like scientific research, if you put your hand out to goverment for funding, then you have to be aware of what can happen when you do something the funder’s don’t like.
I vote for Barney to get lethel injection…..and I’m anti-death penalty.
While I haven’t seen any episodes of this show, I did read the full linked article, and don’t see the controversy. If this represents something so heinous as to merit organizing 150,000 emails, someone is much too sensitive. At this rate, it won’t be long before PBS is limited solely to broadcasting nothing but pictures of the flag and Yankee Bean Soup being served in the House commissary.
Whats entertaining is that
EDITED again..
LESS then 1%…LESS then 0.5% Had a voice…
I think I know the EDIT problem..NO special charactors admitted.