perfidy

Freshly minted Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings has a lot on her plate: overseeing the No Child Left Behind program; ordering herself a new stapler; untangling an unspeakable labor-relations miasma with the teachers' unions; coordinating the introduction of new abilities tests and learning standards for public school students of all kinds.

But lucky for her, she's got herself a nose for the important stuff.

The nation's new education secretary denounced PBS on Tuesday for spending public money on a cartoon with lesbian characters, saying many parents would not want children exposed to such lifestyles.

The not-yet-aired episode of "Postcards From Buster" shows the title character, an animated bunny named Buster, on a trip to Vermont - a state known for recognizing same-sex civil unions. The episode features two lesbian couples, although the focus is on farm life and maple sugaring.

Surely the best way to make sure children grow up well-adjusted and intelligent is to hide from them the stunning diversity of the ways people live. That way their minds can grow unhampered by such poisionous things as opinions, controversy, and maple sugar.

So we've got Miss Moral Majority in Education, and a yes-man for the rubber hose brigade in Justice. What's next? Pinkerton for Secretary of Labor?

[wik] I mean, really. Spellings is quite solicitous of people who might be offended by the fact that women can live together (in an arrangement we used to call "spinsters" or "maiden aunts"), and yet. My wife and I are not churchgoing folks, and though we want to make sure that some type of spirituality enters into the lives of our as yet theoretical children, we are deeply ambivalent about how best to do that without being either hypocritical (meaning we insincerely join a church for the sake of the children), or offhanded. The same "Buster" program that shows lesbians engaging in *gasp* sugaring also includes and episode featuring a visit to a fundamentalist Mormon household. My children could be exposed to the sight of highly religious people living in a way that comports with their idiosyncratic and uncommon personal beliefs! Where's the outrage, people?! Where's the outrage?!!!!!