Dr. Dobson never said that SpongeBob Squarepants is gay!
Dr James C. Dobson, founder of the Focus on the Family ministry, says that he never said that Spongepants Squarebob (well, you know who I mean) is gay. More precisely, he says that he never said that the sponge-like square fellow has homesexual characteristics. To quote him: "I said no such thing."
The problem, it turns out, is not with the spongy critter but rather with a video featuring a whole host of children's characters, including Big Bird, Barney, and others as well as that gay sponge. This "We are family" video attempts to send the somewhat bland message of practicing unity while respecting diversity.
I'm not a fan of Squarepants, and I don't let my kids watch the show. (Julian and Nicholas are active enough without the frenetics in this particular cartoon.)
That said, Dobson's critique of Squarepants and other kids characters as encouraging homosexuality would be funny (actually, it is funny!) if Dr. Dobson weren't a close spiritual adviser to President Bush and quite influential on public policy matters. There's been quite a bit of commentary about this, see for example this Slate article and the book James Dobson's War on America. According to one estimate, he controls 7,000,000 votes.
Dobson got his start as a pediatrician and author of Dare to Discipline with the agenda of rehabiliting spanking as a parental tool.
As I said, his fruitcake comments would be grimly amusing if only those in power in America didn't take him so seriously. The extension of the kind of "blunt power counts" ideology you see in "Dare to Discipline" justifies first-strike displays of brute force such as the Iraq invasion and the potential bombing of Iran.
In his book for parents about spanking, he recounts many of the beatings he received as a kid, including with his mom's corset, buckles, stays, and all. My diagnosis is permanent psychological damage. But you gotta wonder what we are doing as a country taking this man seriously. Something has gone badly wrong, someone should be spanked -- and the someone isn't the cartoon character with a rectangular rear-end.
Posted by Harold Davis at January 27, 2005 03:16 PM
