SpongeBob comes a Buster with US Christian Right

So why did the Christian Right single out SpongeBob for censor? The AFA believes its plot line is “an insidious means by which the organisation is manipulating and potentially brainwashing kids. It’s a classic bait and switch". To date, Madeline, Big Bird, Dora and Pooh have escaped moral condemnation for associating with SpongeBob.

Faced with widespread ridicule, Dodson was quick to highlight the hellish media plot which had swiftly built against him, urging his followers to redirect their fury towards the eight page teachers’ guide accompanying the DVD. The We Are Family Foundation’s Teachers Guide references same-sex parents and suggests how teachers might respond if kids ask about non-typical familial assemblages, such as adoptive parents and stepsiblings. Heavens above! All this life shaping undercover content squeezed into a hundred afternoon TV identities, including a talking sponge who’s hung-on to his day job! “Tolerance itself can be a dangerous word”, the Reverend Terry Fox, a southern Baptist pastor from Wichita Kansas said. “Tolerance gives the public schools an avenue to literally brainwash our kids that every lifestyle is OK.”

When questioned about the SpongeBob-Buster controversy later on C-Span, President Bush told America, “They put an ‘off’ button on the TV for a reason. Turn it off”.

In truth the story has impacted acutely on contemporary American public debate. NBC’s Keith Olberman, hosting the network’s popular Bloggerman website was torpedoed with volumes of unpleasant mail from Conservative Christians, often generated directly from Reverend Dobson’s website exhorting true believers to help force American media to stop “distorting” his words. Olberman was surprised at the percentage of emails expressing anger at the lack of an even more virulent “anti-homosexual agenda”. Others sound even more rabid if that’s possible: “I showed respect even though I disagreed with you and yet you have the audacity to call me intelligent.” A significant quantity evoked threats of “what we did to Dan Rather” (who’d retired some months ago after a long career on CBS Evening News) and “we got Tom Brokaw at ABC and we can get you”. Many of the emails Olberman received were generated from Reverend Dodson’s website to force American media to stop “distorting” his words.

Unsurprisingly, the SpongeBob and Buster stories have persisted in newspapers, TV and radio in isolated cities and towns throughout the US, Canada, UK and now here in Australia. Regional commentators have used the story to point out the hypocrisies of Secretary Spellings and Reverend Dobson’s intolerant views on the acceptability of homosexuality in our communities, so that their specious bigotry can be openly countenanced. The Bush Administration’s increased vulnerability to Christian conservatives' self-described “spiritual battle for America’s soul” is not something leading liberal commentators believe US society can afford to ignore if America is to retain its democratic integrity. Weeks ago, Doug Ireland’s LA Weekly column Post Cards of Intolerance raised the alarm of the dangers of self-censorship emerging from within the liberal left.

Ireland interviewed Harvard University’s Arthur Lipton who noted, “when PBS engage(s) in this sort of self censorship, it sets a very poor example for teachers, who get little encouragement to teach tolerance in schools - they’ll say, if these so called good liberals won’t stand up, why should I risk getting in trouble or losing my job by teaching tolerance of gay people”.

If anything though, the New York Times’  Frank Rich is even angrier at the Administration’s pandering to the Christian right wing. Last month he wrote, “Inane though it may be that Ms. Spellings is conducting a witch hunt against Buster or that James Dobson has taken aim at SpongBob SquarePants, there’s a method in their idiocy: the cartoon surrogates are deliberately chosen to camouflage the harshness of their assault on nonanimated, flesh and blood people.”

Last week’s Oscar Awards Ceremony ABC broadcast was to have included comedian Robin William’s satirical quips about the Reverend Dodson’s SpongeBob escapades. Fearing fundamentalist reprisals, the network pulled William’s best lines at the last minute. In response, the comic went on stage wearing white tape plastered symbolically over his mouth, pained that his biggest laughs had been so brutally culled now that Bush’s “faith based” agenda has taken such firm hold of America’s sense of humor.

In spite of all this, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings is adamant that rather than increasing funding to under resourced, over-crowded US primary schools, the nation’s parents can now choose what educational content their children receive. It is a recipe for generational mayhem that shortchanges children basic social survival skills. Imagine if your kids realise you’ve opted them out of the tough tolerance and diversity subjects at school, in favor of safe fundamentally sanctioned topics, because their teachers are too scared to teach from the modern curriculum and you’re afraid to rock the boat in your community? Expect a mass outbreak of class actions conducted by angry young intolerant adults who show up holding hands with a starfish to slap a lawsuit on you for intellectual manipulation and ideological oppression.