A few weeks ago, PBS Kids show Arthur made kids show history by featuring a secondary character, titular character Arthur Read's beloved teacher Mr. Nigel Ratburn, getting married to a person of the same sex -- a local chocolatier named Patrick. It made news the world over before it even aired, and of course opinions on it divided the country in 2019. One opinion making news today isn't from a person. It's a member station of the Public Broadcasting Service, Alabama Public Television, who decided to ban the episode of the aforementioned gay wedding , "Mr. Ratburn and the Special Someone", from airing.
Mike McKenzie, director of programming at APT, told NBC News in this article that PBS sent a message to stations in mid-April alerting them "to possible viewer concerns about the content of the program." After he and others at APT viewed the episode, they decided not to broadcast it.
McKenzie said the station has no plans to air it.
"Parents have trusted Alabama Public Television for more than 50 years to provide children's programs that entertain, educate and inspire," McKenzie said in a statement. "More importantly — 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."
BULL. SHIIIIIIT.
If this station has been on the air for half a century, then they have shown some of the most shocking, unbelievable and jawdropping events in history or in a scripted TV show as much as PBS would allow. And as a public television network meant to EDUCATE their viewers, they let in so much that may shock or creep them out. And yet, gay marriage on a kids show was the line that can't be crossed. Apparently APT chooses not to air The NewsHour and BBC World News either, or else a viewer watching would get triggered if the word 'gay' was even implied.
This is a dumb decision to me. Everyone and their grandmother (hopefully not mine, she'd go to orbit) has heard of the episode and the reveal. If fact all we got from this is that Nigel and Patrick fully became... Pigal...or Nitrick...or Pigatrical... ? ...any literally nothing else. And it's not really a sacrilegious topic anymore! It hasn't been for decades! And kids who aren't thought about it at an early age from a trusty source will learn about it from anywhere. It'll be like learning about sex from The Maury Show or Glenn Quagmire! (Although, if you pay deep enough attention, these two things would be perfect lessons on how and why NOT to have sex.
Back to the episode, the wedding itself was only at the last few minutes of the episode, and the bug reveal was nothing felt more than a subtle implication, barely a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. And Ratburn's main students were surprised but cool with it (sure, they were supposed to, as it's a TV show). And if they're cool with it, then no damn doubt, the kids watching would be cool with it.
So why ban it, APT? Kids are going to watch the episode no matter where they watch Arthur -- on the website, on YouTube, on a random borderline unsafe third-party cartoon website or even a torrent site. They'll hear about it from their friends, and they wonder why Mr. Ratburn got married to a guy and ask their parents about it--oh I get it now.
Kids shouldn't know about gay marriage, because God didn't create it, and whatever he didn't create in his image it doesn't exist in Alabama's book. Kinda like racial equality, history books, bathing, not breaking the law, maiming, consent or attraction to non-related people.
But hey, it's Alabama, a super red state, where it's better to treat black people like garbage, where abortion is an evil baby-killing procedure, you can love and marry your cousin, and you can screw your pets too! But if two men and two women get married, GOD FORBID, IT'S UNACCEPTABLE, AND SHOULD BE BANNED FOREVER! UH-HYUCK-UH.
I am so glad I don't live in Alabama because if this is the thought process on many once-taboo-now real-life things like homosexuality and gay marriage at a fucking PBS station (which I thought had the balls to once air episodes of Zoom, Mister Rogers Neighborhood and Sesame Street which tackled the brutal (to say it lightly) topics of the 9/11 Attacks, the possible aftermath of nuclear warfare and fucking death), then I don't want to know what regular citizens probably like the people at the station think about this. I already hear shit like this on TV and online already every other day, so I'll pass on it here.
"It's a whole new world".
Apparently, not whole or new enough...
Not just yet.
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