Lately, most of those questions have concerned what's going on down south.
People worldwide are confused, and rightly so, because they read that America is the land of the free and yet they see basic rights being abrogated at the whim of local officials, judges, and people elected to oversee the states and the nation.
Here's the latest example, and if this nonsense from Alabama keeps up, I might have to think about changing my college football allegiance to Slippery Rock State or some such.
Alabama Public Television did not show the season premiere episode of "Arthur" from PBS because it included a same-sex marriage.
The other 49 states managed to see the May 13 episode without anything falling apart. Imagine the horror in Alabama, where people could not see a show in which Arthur and his friends go to see their teacher Mr. Ratburn marry his partner.
APT preempted the episode, showing a re-run of Arthur in which no one got married.
For those who have never seen the show, Arthur is an aardvark with human qualities, such as the ability to love other people and allow them to love others as they see fit.
Mike Mckenzie does not have that ability. Mckenzie is director of programming at APT and he says that in mid-April he got word about the episode entitled “Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone” and decided that the world would fall to rack and ruin if kids down in Sweet Home Alabama saw evidence that the world has continued to evolve.
“Parents have trusted Alabama Public Television for more than 50 years to provide children’s programs that entertain, educate and inspire,” Mckenzie said in an email. “More importantly (sic) – although we strongly encourage parents to watch television with their children and talk about what they have learned afterwards – parents trust that their children can watch APT without their supervision. We also know that children who are younger than the ‘target’ audience for Arthur also watch the program.”
Alabamians with sharp memories for times in the past when APT pretended the antebellum South still existed recalled when the stations pulled an episode of Arthur in 2005, when Buster, a bunny character in Arthur, visited a girl who had two mothers.
Lord have mercy! I have the vapors!
I'm reminded almost daily of the friend of mine who told me that as his children grew up, he would make sure they knew nothing of sex or drugs, and therefore would have no interest in either.
And all the time, we see people who are thoroughly convinced that if they ignore things they don't like, those things will cease to exist, like dodos and winning baseball seasons in Baltimore.
So, friends, both American and wherever, that's the report for today. There are people here who feel they were born special, with the ability to decide who should love whom. The secret is, they were not.
The banned Arthur episode is available online at pbs.org.
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