A Natural Experiment
And now, a natural experiment to prove who is more influential: Oprah or cleric James Dobson. Oprah, famously, sends American women to the bookstores; can Dobson top that? He’s going to try! He’s picked a fight with media heavyweight Spongebob Squarepants, according to Reason. If Dobson can knock Spongebob off television, thereby ending his threat to our nation’s children, then he may be as influential as Hugh Hewitt claimed a few days ago. If the good doctor can’t beat one lousy kids’ show, though, he ain’t nothin’. Heck, one lowly psychiatrist could shut down the American comic book industry…certainly “the most influential person outside government” can take on one little kiddies’ show.
Update: I can’t help but notice that former claimants to the throne Dobson now occupies have been all but forgotten by history: Billy Sunday, Aimee Semple MacPherson, Fr. Charles Coughlin, Billy James Hargis….
14 Responses to “A Natural Experiment”
I love Spongebob Squarepants. The episode where he lost his identity is a classic. Don’t these guys have anything better to do than pick on Spongebob? Spongebob rocks!
Hmmm. Don’t folks think these things out first? Criminey. I’ve only seen a couple eps of SpongeBob but I’ve found more surreal silliness (in a good way) than indoctrination, of which I’ve found none. Dobson’d have an easier time with the Wiggles but I don’t think the song “Cold Spaghetti” is any more a smoking gun than Patrick in SpongeBob. (SIGH)
And I dimly recall the Werther & comics thing. Yeah, there’s some really crappy (read: sick, demonic, disturbing, etc) comics out there but, c’mon, Batman rocks!
More on Influence
In the Agora points to this New York Times article about James Dobson taking on Spongebob Squarepants.
Last I checked, Dobson’s not ordained, so “cleric” doesn’t quite fit. He’s a psychologist, not a preacher, albeit a Christian one.
I’m not sure what to think of this one; there are better places for Dopson’s fire than Sponge Bob.
I’d vote for Dobson, because the view is solid, but have to agree that I think they’re might be a better aim than Spongebob. But I have to admit I’ve never watched an episode, never appealed to me…
For those who didn’t follow the blog trail to the NY Times article, Dobson isn’t seeing a pro-gay message in the Spongebob cartoon, a la Falwell and the Teletubbies. His beef is that Spongebob appears in a film about “tolerance” distributed to elementary schools, which in some places was accompanied by a pledge to respect differences in “sexual identity.” (However, the pledge isn’t mentioned on the video and is only available from the Southern Poverty Law Center’s web site.)
Never heard of Hargis (clicking article)…well, anyone who had something against “parlour Bolsheviks” couldn’t be all bad.
Most times I run into Coughlin’s name is in some leftist tirade trying to link the modern right with his ilk.
Though Hewitt will certainly disagree, Spongebob is probably more influential than Dobson. When was the last time a giant inflatable Dobson was perched atop your local Burger King?
I have written two articles on my blog in the past week regarding Spongebob. Please go to http://whatbox.blogspot.com for the full scoop!
From the We Are Family foundation:
“I pledge to have respect for people whose abilities, beliefs, culture, race, sexual identity or other characteristics are different from my own…”
Abilities???
The problems with the tolerance pledge are twofold. One, it does not distinguish between behavioral and nobehavioral differences. Racial identity has no bearing on ethics, whereas culture, religion, and psychological disposition do.
Second, there is no explicit statement that accepting people does not require accepting their cultural, psychological, and religious disposition. Why should the distinction be made? Because there’s a lot of hucksters who preach the opposite.
Alan, exactly what do you think they mean by abilities? Personally I took it as their way of saying handicapped. You know, you can walk – they can’t, you can see – they can’t. And so on. In other words, don’t bully the different kid. With the mainstreaming of so many classrooms to include a variety of handicapped students it’s not like you shouldn’t be pointing out these things. Children can be vicious. We should try to teach them better.
I had completely forgotten about the smarmy PC expression “differently-abled” for “handicapped.” I don’t run across that expression in everyday life. I’m not living in a blue state or enrolled at an elite university or a member of the NEA or anything like that.
The sentence makes better sense if it reads “I pledge to have respect for people whose disabilities…” Ability and disability are not synonymous.
After some thought, I take back the word “smarmy.” “Smarmy” describes the PC attitude towards the supposedly unenlightened who refuse to adopt the PC lexicon. The attitude toward the handicapped is something different: condescension. The PC crowd assumes “handicapped” is a pejorative when it is not, assumes that the handicapped think likewise (thus overestimating their sensitivity to the word), and comes up with a genuinely condescending (and Orwellian) euphemism to replace it.
Keep something else in mind: lots of children are visiting this site. The use of the word “ability” will confuse many of them, who will think of things that some kids can do that others can’t (sports is a big example for boys) without thinking a second about handicapped kids, unless they personally know handicapped kids. (I didn’t when I was in school.) Differing levels of athleticism and normal-range intelligence and whatnot are excuses for picking on kids. The pledge should account for both contexts of differing abilities (somethig like “I pledge to have respect for people with disabilities, and whose beliefs, culture, talents…”), and as stated earlier, should include a disclaimer that people don’t have to like each others beliefs, culture, etc. to respect each other.
And yes, I caught my “ability vs. disability” grammatical error – that should be clear in my latest rewording of the pledge.
Enough commenting. It’s tea time.