http://www.nbr.co.nz/home/colu...1140&cid=1&cname=Media
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Jesus H. Christ on a popsicle stick.A low level media war has broken out in the United States over a perplexing, but extraordinarily peripheral, issue: Is cartoon character SpongeBob ... gay?
Last week, no less a source than the New York Times said Christian-rights activist James Dobson had "outed" SpongeBob, claiming he was the star of a "pro-homosexuality" video.
To his eternal discredit, he did this at a black-tie inaugural dinner, delivering an inadvertant black eye to the Bush administration and sending howls of derisive glee through the liberal media.
In covering the story, which has itself achieved cult status, the LA Times recounted the following events in an editorial:
The issue?"Does anyone here know SpongeBob?" Dr. James Dobson asked darkly, addressing a black-tie audience at one of Tuesday's inaugural events. Dobson is the founder of Focus on the Family, one of the nation's most outspoken conservative Christian groups. SpongeBob holds hands with his [pink!] starfish pal Patrick, and likes to watch the imaginary television show "The Adventures of Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy."
A video starring a number of cartoon characters -- among them Arthur the aardvark, Big Bird, Clifford the Big Red Dog, and Jimmy Neutron -- advocating tolerance, created by the by the We Are Family Foundation.
The video will be distibuted free of charge to 61,000 public and private elementary schools in the United States on March 11, 2005, in celebration of a proposed National We Are Family Day, the Foundation says.
What do all these cartoon characters actually do on the video?
Sing the overworked disco hit "We Are Family," for starters. But there's a lesson plan that comes with the video and wrap around comments from such dangerous figures as Bill Cosby -- so anything could happen, really.
The LA Times noted that the video promotes a "tolerance pledge" for schoolkids that could extend to sexual identity -- but the NYTimes notes that the pledge is available only on the Foundation's website and is not part of the video.
The insidious pledge (borrowed from the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to the NYT) includes the line: "I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own." [emphasis added]
Well, it's so ... obvious.
"We see the video ? as manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids," Mr Dobson's spokesperson told the New York Times on Wednesday. "It's a classic bait and switch."
A "homosexuality detection expert" at the similarly conservative Family Research Council told the NY Times that words like "tolerance" and "diversity" are part of a "coded language that is regularly used by the homosexual community."
Astute followers of the American religious right will recall a similar incident in the not very distant past (1999) when an overwrought Rev Jerry Falwell almost torpedoed his career by "outing" the amorphously androgynous Teletubbies character Tinky Winky as gay -- gay because of "his" purple coat, triangular head adornment (the gay pride symbol is a triangle) and red vinyl purse.
Time magazine reminds its readers this week of the slinky Tinky kerfuffle and names other cartoon characters held by some to be gay, among them Muppets Bert and Ernie.
So, what does SpongeBob have to say about all this?
The Syracuse Post-Standard called him and asked.
SpongeBob, being both a sponge and a cartoon, uses the voice of East Syracuse native Tom Kenny to do his singing and Mr Kenny scoffed at the allegation.
"SpongeBob" told the Post-Standard:
But that probably won't happen soon."I could maybe see it their way if this was a video with Barbra Streisand and Madonna and Judy Garland," Kenny said, a tongue-in-cheek reference to performers who supposedly have large gay followings. "We're talking about cartoon characters here, and these people are just trying to make a video that (says) it's a positive, good thing to be respectful of people different than you.
"Let me ask you, who would you rather go bowling with, SpongeBob and his friends or the Rev. James Dobson? Who would you rather go out with and have a few beers? Probably the only common ground I have with the Rev. James Dobson is that I haven't seen the video, and I'll bet he hasn't either. All he knows (Kenny dropped into an angry backwoods voice) is that it's a little yellow guy full of holes who's saying it's OK for men to be with men.
"It's very entertaining. The entertainment industry could use more people with that kind of wild imagination."
On the other hand, Mark Barondess, the foundation's lawyer, told the NYTimes that critics of the video "need medication."
Just not amyl nitrate poppers.
:roll:
:brokenheart:
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