The continued reference to Mary Cheney by the Dems

VICTORY!!!

Quote:

Greetings,

During the week of February 7, WOSU was able to screen the Postcards from Buster episode entitled "Sugartime" and decided the program is consistent with our mission and appropriate to broadcast. At the same time, we respect the right of parents to make viewing choices for their own families and we encourage them to do so. The main goal of our children's schedule is to serve as a trusted partner to parents and caregivers, providing educational experiences that prepare children for school and their lives ahead. The care that we take in our daily block of children's programs is particularly important, since parents consider it a safe harbor and many children watch without adult supervision.

After thoughtful consideration, WOSU is scheduling a special broadcast of the Postcards from Buster "Sugartime" episode in primetime at 7 pm on Friday, March 25th, providing viewers the opportunity to see the program that has been the subject of recent controversy. The program will be followed by a special edition of the locally produced Viewpoint, which will study the issues raised by the controversy. The primetime airing allows you the occasion to tape the production to view with your children.

After we firm up the details of this special broadcast, we will send you additional information. As always, thank you for your comments and concerns regarding The WOSU Stations.

Best wishes

Of course I wish that it was on at the regular time -- the message of here we go nothing special just a family with a coupla moms making maple sugar is rather undermined by the oooh special time and oooh a special examining the issues -- but they're showing it! And they even used some of the terminology I did in my letters complaining!!!

Man, I gotta get back into the activism gig. It's fun.

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Remind me closer to the date, Soz. I'll put on my WOSU sweatshirt in their honour.

That's quite a decent approach to it, I think. The non-PBS families are not going to watch it in any case; parents with doubts can tape and watch before screening for kids; parents without doubts can watch with kids or let the kids watch on own.

When would it normally have been shown? If the target market is tweenies, wouldn't it have to be on at about that time in any case?

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It's usually on at 3:30 PM, about when they get out of school. PBS doesn't have any kid's programming on past 6:00 PM.

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Well done, soz!

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Quote:

That's quite a decent approach to it, I think. The non-PBS families are not going to watch it in any case; parents with doubts can tape and watch before screening for kids; parents without doubts can watch with kids or let the kids watch on own.

Agreed. And that's all any of us asked for.

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That's NOT all the Bush Secretary of Education is interested in.

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Really. Could you please post the formal psychoanalysis of her or her testimony as given under influence of truth serum please?

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dlowan wrote:

"Disease, divorce, mental retardation, and homosexualiy -- yeah, nothing wrong with it. Sigh. "

I am at the point of blaming the schools, or something.

For people to CONTINUE to pair homosexuality with such things, while brightly denying that they see "anything wrong with it" , defies logic to a point that is leaving me gasping in stunned amazement.

Thing is - I have no problem with the - (what appears to be unconscious) - negative attitude expressed by some on this thread.

They all seem to have perfectly decent politics and such on homosexuality - we all have prejudices - I would never ask that we cease to have them (it is great if we can!) - only that we manage them and do not act on the basis of them. But - having consistently uttered these words - to deny that some of you have an underlying negative view of homosexuality that leaks out in this discussion - well....

This is one post I reference. I just want to say that you can decide to postpone explaining to young children issues like homosexuality without personally having negative feelings about it.

Blanket negative feelings about homosexuality, to me, is homophobia to a degree.

Freeduck--

If someone had out and out accused me personally of homophobia, the conversation about it would likely be very specific. There wasn't a personal insult involved, and my effort to get to the bottom of this isn't a hunt for someone to accuse--but a sincere attempt to explain how some parents honestly see things differently than the prevailing posters here. A couple of issues have risen up that have interested me--regarding the sincere thinking differences--or honest approaches to life that differ among people. The Red/Blue state thing, ya know.

I have seen a few posts with content much like dlowan's above--where the rationale is: If they don't think there's anything wrong with homosexuality, they won't have any problem explaining it to their children. It implies homophobia. I just wish those with differing opinions about this could know that is not always true.

It seems you and others may think I'm trying to pin an insult on someone. The victimization **** is so off the mark.

I don't think a program geared for such young children should feature gay people who are identified as gay. I do understand the other opinion. I guess that's where I stepped into this. I guess I've explained enough. I just can't stand being lumped incorrectly, even by implication, without trying to resolve it.

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Foxfyre wrote:

Really. Could you please post the formal psychoanalysis of her or her testimony as given under influence of truth serum please?

Quote:

"Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode,"

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Okay now go back and get her WHOLE quote in context along with qualifications she attached to it.

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Anyway, as I said earlier, this issue is important and worthy as a civil rights matter, and it ought to procede as such. Along with gypsies, jews and poles, homosexuals were a favored category for Zyklon B consumption.

But I think we ought to understand that the issue is important or valuable to Rove as a tool for gaining votes, and for shifting attention away from other issues (torture, for example) which might better occupy our thoughts.

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While Spellings did included the sentence, quite accurately, in her letter based on the affirmation she has received from parents who did like the overall program but were not ready to have a discussion about homosexuality with their young children, she included the following that has been widely cited that she BANNED the program:

Quote:

In light of these concerns, we have several requests. First, if you air the show, we must insist that you remove from the specific episode the Department's seal, as well as any other logo or statement indicating that the Department funded, endorsed, sponsored or was involved in the development, creation, or production of the episode, and, in addition, that you also remove any such reference in any materials about the program. Second, we request that you notify your member stations of the nature of the content of these programs and ask that they review the programs before deciding whether to air them. Third, in the interest of avoiding embroiling the Ready-To-Learn program in a controversy that will only hurt the program, we believe you should strongly consider refunding to the Department the Federal education funds that were used for the episode.

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Soz, that's great news. I hope it will be shown in my area as well.

For Lash, not to beat this to death, but can you see that dlowan's comment was not about someone not wanting to talk about homosexuality with their kids, but about someone comparing homosexuality to divorce, disease, and mental retardation -- all things that are not viewed positively or even as normal -- and then denying that they think that there is anything wrong with homosexuality.

I do understand your point, Lash. Many people, myself included, resent it when other people take too strong an interest in how their children are brought up. But I really don't think that the prevailing argument here is that you are homophobic if you don't want to talk to your kids about homosexuality. I'm sorry if that has not been clear.

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Well, that's very nice of you Freeduck. Thank you.

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Lash wrote:

This is one post I reference. I just want to say that you can decide to postpone explaining to young children issues like homosexuality without personally having negative feelings about it.

Fair enough. And your opposition, as far as I could make out, had no problem with this so far. The problem was with the conclusion you drew, and which you just repeated. You didn't say, 'I prefer to postpone explaining homosexuality to young children, so I'll change the channel when PBS runs that episode.' You didn't say, 'I'll change the channel, and I'll reduce my donation to PBS because they broadcast fewer shows I want my children to watch.' You concluded:

Lash wrote:

I don't think a program geared for such young children should feature gay people who are identified as gay.

This appears to mean: 'I don't just want the choice not to watch that episode myself. I want the program to deny this choice to parents with other preferences than myself.' That was the part of your argument I had a problem with when I read it, and I suspect it's the part the others had a problem with too. It's not about the choices you want to make for your own parenting, it's about the choices you think the program should make for other people's parenting.

(Disclaimer: I didn't pay very much attention to this thread, so it's possible that I missed something relevant.)

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Quote:

It's not about the choices you want to make for your own parenting, it's about the choices you think the program should make for other people's parenting.

Yes.

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Thomas wrote

Quote:

Fair enough. And your opposition, as far as I could make out, had no problem with this so far. The problem was with the conclusion you drew, and which you just repeated. You didn't say, 'I prefer to postpone explaining homosexuality to young children, so I'll change the channel when PBS runs that episode.' You didn't say, 'I'll change the channel, and I'll reduce my donation to PBS because they broadcast fewer shows I want my children to watch.' You concluded:

Okay you sit down with your cup of coffee and your young children to watch a very good, informative program that for weeks and weeks has been noncontroversial and safe. Wham. There is the issue of same-sex parents, unexpectedly and right there on the screen. So you change the channel. How do you explain this to your disappointed and frustrated young children without getting into the specifics of the very discussion you wanted to postpone until they were old enough to understand?

If the program was somehow bashing gay people or saying that homosexuality was bad or evil, I would object just as much.

The solution the PBS station in Soz's area came up with conforms to what the Education secretary requested and is most reasonable. Show it at a time that young children are not likely to be watching, give it a lead so parents know what's coming, let them prescreen the program and tape it and show it to their kids if they deem in acceptable. It very well may have been acceptable as I have not seen it.

But like Lash, there are some subjects that are just not easily understood by very young children and you postpone those discussions.

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God damn, Thomas, I wish I could say it that good.

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I edited my previous post once to add the last couple of paragraphs. I edited once. It shows that I edited twice. Odd.

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Thomas does summarize it wonderfully.

Foxfyre wrote:

Okay you sit down with your cup of coffee and your young children to watch a very good, informative program that for weeks and weeks has been noncontroversial and safe. Wham.

The nocontroversial and safe program that in those weeks has shown episodes on Mormons, Pentecostal Christians, Orthodox Jews, and especially a Muslim family -- which addresses some of the difficulties they had after 9/11?

Once again, this is SO in keeping with the entire program.

(And meanwhile you have the opportunity to turn it off after the opening sequence that lays out exactly what it will be about -- 30 seconds or so.)

Foxfyre wrote:

But like Lash, there are some subjects that are just not easily understood by very young children and you postpone those discussions.

This is indeed a core of the discussion, and indeed a core disagreement. However, I'll take the opportunity to clarify that what I/ we have been saying is not, "you are wrong to not want to discuss this with your children", it is "what evidence do you have for such general statements?" My three-year-old daughter understood just fine that there are many different kinds of families. That sometimes men get married for the same reason women and men get married to each other -- because they love each other. It is not hard to tailor explanations to understanding.

I'm not saying that you can't turn the TV off -- fine. We're saying that it would be nice to have some sort of objective, general basis for statements like "it's not easily understood by very young children and you postpone these discussions" if you are applying them to EVERYONE -- which you are doing if you are using it as an argument for anything but turning the show off, yourself.

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The continued reference to Mary Cheney by the Dems

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