Adventures In Controlling The Media, Part 3

From my father comes this disturbing news:

"Maybe you could give some space to the recent flap over PBS and Margaret Spelling, the new Secretary of non-Education. She apparently muscled PBS not to air a show that might indicate that a child that is growing up in a same-sex parental household can be healthy, happy, well-adjusted, and even normal. Apparently, the PBS poohbahs decided earlier, before the Secretary could threaten the purse-string threat, that the 'message' was not appropriate. That whole thing stinks of prior restraints on free speech - just as beginners."

Post TV columnist Lisa de Moraes gives it a more in-depth look here. She describes the claim that PBS had already pulled the episode as how it "sounds great if you were born yesterday; otherwise, not so much."

And yet, the DoE spokesperson has the gall to say that, regarding the nature of material shown to children, "It's up to parents to decide for their children, not the government in a taxpayer-funded video for preschoolers." Um, pardon me, but aren't you, the government, deciding what parents should show their kids by censoring the show? I'm sure the idea that one can give parents choices by limiting their choices makes sense... when you're on acid. And this is the Education Department? No wonder our education system sucks. The people at the top have no capacity for abstract thought.

So the Education Department is using its muscle to make sure that public television doesn't give our children gay (as esteemed social critic Homer Simpson would say). And they're paying off columnists to back No Child Left Behind. The naming of this department is becoming more Orwellian by the second.

At least it's amusing that Bush has chosen people named Paige and Spelling as Education Secretary.