And may I remind you, rock, for a plane to fly, it needs both a left wing and a right wing. It's what keeps the rest of the plane centered.
The Cartoon Closet Jerry Falwell doesn't know the half of it.
By Jacob Weisberg
Posted Sunday, Feb. 21, 1999, at 12:30 AM PT
Tinky Winky
The reaction to the Rev. Jerry Falwell's outing of Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby, was widespread scorn and hilarity. Comedians and column writers mercilessly ridiculed Falwell for his paranoia in seeing gays under the crib.Three comments in defense of Falwell: First, he didn't write the article in question, which appeared unsigned in National Liberty Journal, a magazine he publishes. When asked about the charge, Falwell said he had never seen Teletubbies and didn't know whether Tinky Winky was homosexual or not. The notion of Falwell attacking a cartoon character is too appealing to liberal prejudices to be easily abandoned.
Second, if you've ever watched Teletubbies, you might well suspect some kind of subliminal messaging. The four tubbies have aerials coming out of their spacesuit hoods, which receive programming that's broadcast on TV screens in their tummies. As they prance out of their bunker and around the strange, apocalyptic landscape where they live, periscope speakers pop out of the ground and feed them orders. It's both cute and creepy.
Third, the folks at Liberty College apparently got their idea about Tinky Winky not from watching the program but from reading such publications as the Washington Post and People. On Jan. 1, the Post included "TINKY WINKY, THE GAY TELETUBBY" in its annual list of what's "in" for the New Year. No one got excited. The press, including the Post, then mocked Falwell as a reactionary hick obsessed with the sexuality of puppets. Seems like a bit of a trap.
Is Tinky Winky gay? He is not the first cartoon character to be outed. More often than not it is homosexuals who claim a character as one of their own--which also puts the Falwell fuss in perspective. At the level of the creators' stated intentions, the Teletubbies have no sexual orientation....
First off, I never said Falwell wrote the article in question, nor did I say that Falwell himself invented the "Tinky Winky was gay" hubbub. What I said was that Fallwell aggravated an already lousy situation, and that it was equally wrong for him to drag his biases into the children's programming as it was for the gay rights groups (or gay-friendly writers in the Washington Post).
I never said that Falwell thought himself to be either God or the President, but rather that I think him a fool, an extremist, and a proponent of government censorship over media (the Hustler thing).
And You're right; a plane needs both a left and a right wing to fly. I usually take my place on the right side of the plane (80% of the time), But both wings are equally off-base whenever homosexuality is addressed (Really people, IT'S NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE!)