{"id":1137,"date":"2005-01-28T10:08:54","date_gmt":"2005-01-28T14:08:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2005\/01\/28\/do-not-overstate-my-analogy-here\/"},"modified":"2005-01-28T10:08:54","modified_gmt":"2005-01-28T14:08:54","slug":"do-not-overstate-my-analogy-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2005\/01\/28\/do-not-overstate-my-analogy-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Do not overstate my analogy here!"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Buster the bunny rabbit apparently went too far<\/a>.<\/p>\n

…That was before Education Secretary Margaret Spellings denounced the
\nprogram, starring Buster Baxter, a cute animated rabbit who until now
\nhas been known primarily as a close friend of Arthur, the world’s most
\nfamous aardvark. Ms. Spellings said many parents would not want
\nchildren exposed to a lesbian life style.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Buster joined another
\ncartoon character, SpongeBob SquarePants, as a focus of the nation’s
\nculture wars. SpongeBob was recently attacked by Christian groups for
\nbeing pro-homosexual, though SpongeBob’s creator said it was all a
\nmisinterpretation. Buster’s offense was appearing in “Sugartime!,” the
\nundistributed “Postcards From Buster” show, in which he visits children
\nliving in Vermont whose parents are a lesbian couple. Civil unions are
\nallowed in Vermont.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We might note that this constitutes one of Secretary Spellings’
\nfirst acts in office, since it’s her first week in office. 
\nPerhaps she could do something more useful, like work on raising
\nwriting standards, so that all of my students can write coherent
\nparagraphs and essays, truly preparing them to thrive in a competitive
\nglobal political economy.\n<\/p>\n

Moreover, it’s not like this show proves susceptible to the typical
\ncharge leveled against PBS, that it’s ideologically biased toward
\nleftist ideas and causes.\n<\/p>\n

Buster appears briefly onscreen, but mainly narrates these live-action
\nsegments, which show real children and how they live. One episode
\nfeatured a family with five children, living in a trailer in Virginia,
\nall sharing one room. In another, Buster visits a Mormon family in
\nUtah. He has dropped in on fundamentalist Christians and Muslims as
\nwell as American Indians and Hmong. He has shown the lives of children
\nwho have only one parent, and those who live with grandparents.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Somehow, we think our children will be too fragile to understand
\nthat the world courses with difference and diversity, danger and
\nexcitement, sorrow and joy.  We think that by shielding them,
\nthey’ll be better off. \n<\/p>\n

I don’t
\nmean to overstate the case here, and I don’t think that there’s much <\/span>chance of this happening, but….\n<\/p>\n

In 1934, Hitler purged his enforcers, the S.A, by accusing the
\nleaders of having engaged in homosexual acts with young men. In 1935, Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, which among other
\nthings (deprived Jews of German citizenship, limited some forms of
\nemployment, and put into place the infamous yellow stars) limited the
\nrights of Jews to marry or even have sex with non-Jews.  In 1938, we had Kristallnacht<\/span>, the night of the broken glass.  In 1942, the Wannsee conference took place, at which the German
\ngovernment finalized the plans for the implementation and conclusion of
\nthe “Final Solution.”  Seven years from legal moves against the Jews to their
\nextermination<\/span>.  (And many homosexuals were arrested and sent to the
\nconcentration camps, where they had the highest death rate among the
\nnon-Jewish prisoners.)\n<\/p>\n

Vice President Cheney noted the following at Auschwitz yesterday<\/a>:\n<\/p>\n

Gathered in this place we are reminded that such immense
\ncruelty did not happen in a far-away, uncivilized corner of the world,
\n but rather in the very heart of the civilized world. The death camps
\nwere created by men with a high opinion of themselves – some of them
\nwell educated, and possessed of refined manners – but without
\nconscience.<\/span> And where there is no conscience, there is no tolerance
\ntoward others … no defense against evil … and no limit to the
\ncrimes that follow.<\/p>\n

The story of the camps reminds us that evil is real, and must be called by its name, and must be confronted. [emphasis added]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, I don’t want to overstate any analogies to the Nazi regime —
\ndoing that cheapens my argument and the blood of 14 million people,
\nincluding 6 million Jews. Will banning Buster result in the camps?  I don’t think
\nso.  But the attitude underneath the Buster ban bears more
\nresemblance than I find comfortable.  Besides queers, with what
\nother minority can one go as far in condemning in public
\ndiscourse?  Who else can be invoked as a sign of the national
\nmoral turpitude?  Whose existence is posited by all sorts of
\nnational leaders as destructive of the foundational social
\ninstitutions?  I’m hard-pressed to think of another.  Sounds
\na little too much like the “perfidious Jew.” \n<\/p>\n

Most Americans refuse to believe that such things as holocausts,
\nsystems of terror and fear, and willful human destruction via
\noppression can occur here.  Our history says otherwise.  The
\nline between our good humanity and our bad humanity is neither thick
\nnor bright.  We Americans have an almost unlimited capacity to do
\ngood when we want it, but along with that comes our concurrently great
\ncapacity to do evil.  We’ve done both in the past, and it’s only
\ngreat vigilance that will keep us from sliding into evil again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Buster the bunny rabbit apparently went too far. …That was before Education Secretary Margaret Spellings denounced the program, starring Buster Baxter, a cute animated rabbit who until now has been known primarily as a close friend of Arthur, the world’s most famous aardvark. Ms. Spellings said many parents would not want children exposed to a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-il","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}