Education Secretary Margaret Spellings has asked the Public Broadcasting Service to refund taxpayer dollars used to create and distribute an episode of a cartoon program that features lesbian parents, saying the subject matter was inappropriate and undermines the show's effort to promote literacy. [...] It features a lesbian couple with adopted children in Vermont who accompany Buster to a sugarhouse, where maple syrup is made, and to a dairy farm, where they watch a cow being milked. [...] In a letter to PBS President and Chief Executive Officer Pat Mitchell, Mrs. Spellings insisted that all references to Education Department funding and sponsorship be deleted from the program credits and "any materials about the program," such as teacher guides and student workbooks. [...] Lea Sloan, a PBS spokeswoman, downplayed the furor yesterday, saying Boston PBS affiliate WGBH, which produces the show, still would air the episode on an unspecified date. "There will be no reference to PBS or Department of Education or Ready-to-Learn support," she said. PBS will deliver 40 "Postcards From Buster" episodes under a $99.7 million department grant that began in 2000, as agreed, "and will not include the 'Sugartime!' episode," Miss Sloan said, referring to title of the disputed episode.
[Focus on the Family was responsible for the complaints to Spelling.]
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
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