Secretary of Ed.’s attack on cartoon spells trouble

Way back in the ’80s, in the days of legwarmers and teased bangs, a young, single Karl Rove… Way back in the ’80s, in the days of legwarmers and teased bangs, a young, single Karl Rove was searching for love. So he asked a charming young woman named Margaret out on a date. Unfortunately, young Margaret, for some mysterious reason, just wasn’t interested in dating the dashing Rove. Maybe it was the receding hairline, the beady little eyes, the faint whiff of evil, who knows? Still, Margaret and Karl were destined to meet again.

This time, Karl would try a less direct tactic. Instead of depending on his stunning good looks and irresistible charm, he used his political leverage. Sometime in the late ’80s, before the first war in Iraq, Rove introduced Margaret La Montagne to George W. Bush. The rest, as they say, is history.

Margaret La Montagne, a single mother, became the education guru for Bush when he was governor of Texas. Later, after a new marriage and a new last name, she emerged as Margaret Spellings — now with 100 percent less French pronunciation confusion and 90 percent more name-inspired irony.

I won’t feign enthusiasm about anyone picked by the president. Experience taught me more than any political science class could: Political moves have a variety of subtle meanings. Politics aren’t just about elections or voting, they’re about placing your unqualified buddies in the most powerful spots.

President Bush’s new pick for education secretary is a perfect example of this. Nowhere in her White House biography does Margaret La Montagne Spellings mention any work in a classroom. Her work is completely political. She prides herself on her own public school education, but quietly sends one of her daughters to a private, Catholic high school.

In keeping with her political record, Spellings’ first act as secretary of education had nothing to do with curriculum, proficiency or teaching methods. Instead, to begin her leadership, she chose to pick on a small cartoon character.

She must know something the rest of us don’t — something about that vast, left-wing gay conspiracy and the cartoon characters that take part in it.

The television show in question, “Postcards From Buster,” is about a cartoon rabbit that travels around the country and visits families of all backgrounds. It is meant to foster tolerance and multiculturalism. A recent episode featured the children of a lesbian couple who live on a farm in Vermont.

Some differences are acceptable, and others, apparently, are not. Sixty years after the Holocaust, here in the United States, we have condemned the persecution of every group the Nazis targeted — except one. It is not socially acceptable to be intolerant of the mentally or physically handicapped. Nor is it acceptable to discriminate against people on the basis of religion or color or race. But there is still one group that even the highest government officers are happy to scapegoat loudly and as often as possible.

In keeping with this fine tradition, Spellings took a few moments out of her day to write a letter to Public Broadcasting Service, requesting that this episode be pulled. Her letter included a reminder that the money given to PBS from the Department of Education was not intended for this kind of show. As she put it, “Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode.”

Apparently, children with two mommies don’t deserve representation. It doesn’t matter that there has never been a study that effectively confirms that gay and lesbian couples make worse parents than the average heterosexual couple. No study has ever confirmed that having lesbian parents makes a child any more dysfunctional or unhappy. The most likely adverse effect to having same-sex parents is the social pressure and isolation from society and peers. By her efforts to keep these children from having any representation on television, Spellings effectively ostracizes them.

It’s great that Spellings is looking out for the children, fighting the good fight and really making the important issues high on her list of priorities.

It’s a shame that she hasn’t had to stand in front of a classroom of students and really teach, though, because if she had, she would have learned something important. Many ideas, including prejudice and intolerance, are most effectively taught by example.

And, as history teaches us all, intolerance is a dangerous thing — far more dangerous than a 30-minute cartoon featuring kids with two mommies.

Ginger McCall thinks Karl Rove is hott with two t’s. E-mail her at gpm5@pitt.edu.