The notorious bunny show has been canceled! After Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings lambasted an episode of "Postcards from Buster" (a show about an animated bunny) and demanded that PBS refund the money used to make the show, PBS quickly dropped the episode. They dropped it before Spellings had even finished her sentence. A PBS spokesperson, however, claimed that the Education Department's statements had nothing to do with their decision not to air the show. She said that the decision was due to a realization that homosexuality was a sensitive issue that parents should address with their children in their own time.

Wow. The show must have been pretty bad, huh? Is Buster the Bunny perhaps shown flipping through a coffee table book featuring the art of Tom of Finland? Well, here's a summary of the episode in question. Buster takes a trip to Vermont and visits some people who live on farms and make maple sugar. He meets two lesbian couples, who make out right in front of him. Oh, wait, actually they don't. They don't do anything like that. They don't make radical feminist statements. They don't force Buster to wear leather or rainbow beads. They're just there, and their job is to explain to Buster about how maple sugar is made. The fact that they are lesbians is incidental.

I'm pretty disappointed with PBS. They caved to the demands of the White House without so much as a protest. The reason public television for children is cool is that its only agenda is education, not to be a mouthpiece for whatever administration is in power. Otherwise, they might as well put Scott McClellan in the PBS President's office and let him spin around in the big chair as much as he likes. This act of cowardice does not bode well for the future of public television, either. I mean, what's the point of a network that operates without commercial funding if it's going to eventually become Fox News II?

Another thing that struck me about this whole brouhaha is that the bunny show in question is not even about pro-gay values. It's about basic tolerance, and viewing other people as human beings whose sexuality is only a portion of their identity. (And this is only in subtext—it doesn't overtly address any of this.) It's difficult for me to understand how conservatives can get their panties in a wad about this. What is so wrong with making kids understand that everyone is deserving of respect? Even if you disagree with their lifestyle, even if you think those wacky homosexuals need nothing more than to be converted to Christianity, you still have to address their basic humanity. In other words, if what you're so concerned about is their eternal souls, then first you have to acknowledge that they have souls. See my point? So I ask again, even if you are a devout Christian, what could be wrong with teaching kids to have respect for others? That's what Jesus did, right? He didn't convince people to follow him by being all snotty and imperious. (Has the religious right ever really thought about what Jesus would do?)

Clearly, certain people have a problem with Buster the Bunny because they realize that their agenda is best served when Americans with differing views are at odds with one another. And it's much easier to get folks all revved up about your cause if you have dehumanized the enemy.

Anyway, after slamming the amoral Buster the Bunny for his association with those dangerous lesbians, Spellings has surely got her flaming, lidless eye fixed on PBS. With that in mind (and given PBS's recent talent for pandering), I wouldn't be surprised to see some disturbing new episodes of "Postcards from Buster," in which Buster visits the prisons at Guantanamo and learns that sometimes suspending habeas corpus is the American thing to do.

Tags: politics, popculture