-Caveat Lector-
or, "Go Tele on the Tubby" ?
(Mysterious forces are consolidating ...)
>From SalonMagazine.CoM
I'm sorry, Tinky Winky
THE WRITER WHO OUTED THE "GAY" TELETUBBY IN THE WASHINGTON POST APOLOGIZES
FOR BRINGING THE WRATH OF JERRY FALWELL UPON HIM.
BY MICHAEL COLTON | I'm sorry, Tinky Winky, I truly am. I should have
respected your privacy, and kept your bedroom door shut. I shouldn't have
exposed your purple, gay soul to an unfriendly world.
When noted God-lover and part-time cultural critic Rev. Jerry Falwell
decided to target the hit children's show "Teletubbies" this week, for
supposedly promoting a homosexual icon, I cringed. Then, like the rest of
the country, I laughed. His main ammunition for the attack came from a joke
in a story I wrote for the Washington Post, my former employer. Though I
never intended to arm the religious right, Falwell's paranoia is oddly
flattering.
For the record, "Teletubbies" stars four oversized, non-gendered, fetuslike
creatures named Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po. They have neither gay
nor straight sex, possess no genitalia and don't even masturbate.
(Obviously not human.) Instead, they eat "tubby custard," perform "happy
dances" and watch TV on each other's stomachs. Occasionally, they hug.
They're quite popular among the diapered set.
But Falwell, the Virginia evangelist who warned his followers last month of
the Jewish antichrist who walks among us, is angered by Tinky Winky's
swishy walk. (Some would call it a waddle.)
In the February issue of his National Liberty Journal, Falwell alerts
parents about the British show's gay agenda, citing circumstantial evidence
for Tinky Winky's sexual preference.
"Furthering Tinky's 'outing,'" reads the journal, "was a recent Washington
Post editorial that cast the character's photo opposite that of Ellen
DeGeneres in an 'In/Out' column. This implies that Ellen is 'out' as the
chief national gay representative, while Tinky Winky is the trendy 'in'
celebrity." He also used the Post article to back his argument on "Today"
Thursday morning.
The piece was not an editorial -- the Washington Post editorial board tends
to ignore Ellen DeGeneres' hipness, or lack of it. It was the Post's Style
section's annual In/Out list, which runs every Jan. 1 and gauges the
culture from inside the Beltway.
When writing the list, I put Ellen and her girlfriend, actress Anne Heche,
in the "Out" column, figuring that everyone had tired of the lesbian power
couple. I considered using Rupert Everett as the corresponding "In" item.
But then I remembered how Tinky Winky, because his size and voice are
vaguely masculine and he often carries a red purse, had become a camp icon
among gay viewers here and in Britain. (In fact, Salon's Joyce Millman had
written about Tinky Winky's gay fans over a year ago.) Tinky Winky is
obviously not homosexual, by any stretch of the imagination, but he
possesses a few effeminate characteristics (he also likes to wear a tutu on
occasion). It's amusing to label him gay simply because the idea of
homosexuality -- or any sexuality -- is completely incomprehensible and
irrelevant in Teletubbyland, an idyllic countryside populated by giant
rabbits, a friendly vacuum cleaner and a sun with the face of a baby.
When my piece came out, E! Online picked up the story, saying the
Washington Post had outed Tinky Winky by declaring him "in." I had assumed
it was a commonly known joke. But the story didn't reach ridiculous
proportions until this week, when Falwell stepped in, contributing his own
evidence that Tinky's creators have fashioned a gay role model: His antenna
is triangle-shaped -- the gay-pride symbol. And his skin is purple -- the
gay-pride color. Barney the Dinosaur must be a raging queen.
Falwell admits he's never watched the Teletubbies. But homosexuality
obviously excites the man, as it did the North Carolina minister who
accused Bert and Ernie of being gay companions a few years ago. Remember
Falwell's mantra, "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve"? Now he's criticizing
the sinful cohabitation of Tinky Winky and Dipsy, worrying that little boys
across the country are running around with purses. It's a ludicrous charge,
but one he surely knew would land his name in the papers and on TV once
again.
And what about that purse? Itsy Bitsy Entertainment, the company that
brought the show to America, calls it a "magic bag." Why not? It's no more
ludicrous than a friendly vacuum cleaner.
Be sure to catch "Teletubbies" this week, when Laa-Laa dances with Ellen
and Anne at a dyke bar.
SALON | Feb. 13, 1999
Michael Colton writes for the New York Observer.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From http://www.liberty.edu/chancellor/nlj/feb99/politics2.htm
To view Dr. Falwell's response
to the media on the subject,
please go to www.falwell.com
PARENTS ALERT . . . PARENTS ALERT
Tinky Winky Comes Out of the Closet
The sexual preference of Tinky Winky, the largest of the four Teletubbies
characters on the series that airs in America on PBS stations, has been the
subject of debate since the series premiered in England in 1997.
The character, whose voice is obviously that of a boy, has been found
carrying a red purse in many episodes and has become a favorite character
among gay groups worldwide.
Now, further evidence that the creators of the series intend for Tinky
Winky to be a gay role model have surfaced. He is purple -- the gay-pride
color; and his antenna is shaped like a triangle -- the gay-pride symbol.
Furthering Tinky’s “outing” was a recent Washington Post editorial that
cast the character’s photo opposite that of Ellen DeGeneres in an “In/Out”
column. This implies that Ellen is “out” as the chief national gay
representative, while Tinky Winky is the trendy “in” celebrity.
These subtle depictions are no doubt intentional and parents are warned to
be alert to these elements of the series. However, many families are
allowing the series to entertain their children. In the January 10
Blockbuster “Hit List” of the top-ten selling videos, two Teletubbies
titles appeared on the list. The itsy bitsy Entertainment Company will
release interactive Teletubbies dolls in March.
South Park Invasion
The creators of South Park, the juvenile animated series that airs on
Comedy Central, have released a set of trading cards depicting episodes
from the series that are now being sold in toy, hobby and sports card
stores across the nation.
Parents should be aware that the cards feature the same impudent and vile
language as the series. God’s name is frequently taken in vain, other
four-letter words are continually uttered, female characters are routinely
referred to in vile terms and human waste named Mr. Hankey becomes a live,
speaking character.
In addition, the character of Kenny is brutally massacred in every
broadcast while the remaining characters respond, “Oh my God, they’ve
killed Kenny.” Many of those killings are also depicted in the card series.
The trading cards are the exact size of traditional sports cards, making it
easy for kids to sneak them into the home.
Acclaim Entertainment recently began selling the South Park video game --
which also features extreme violence and obscene language -- for Nintendo
64 with the support of a multi-million dollar marketing campaign.
Disney’s Hollow ‘Promise’ to Parents
On January 8, the Walt Disney Company announced a recall of 3.4 million
video copies of its animated film, The Rescuers, after two frames of the
film were discovered to exhibit the figure of a nude woman. Disney had
earlier refused to recall videos of the films The Little Mermaid and The
Lion King after parents complained that other subliminal messages were
hidden in scenes from those movies.
Disney said it is recalling the videos to “keep its promise to families
that they can trust and rely on the Disney name to provide the finest in
family entertainment.” If that promise is true, families across the nation
wonder why obviously planned offensives persistently show up in the
company’s videos.
“Certainly the image in The Little Mermaid of the clergyman who obtains
[sexual stimulation] while performing the wedding ceremony qualifies as an
image that does not belong in a children’s video,” said Cathy Brown,
director of Why Life? (the youth division of American Life League). “And
having the letters S-E-X float across the screen in The Lion King is
objectionable as well. Why hasn’t Disney recalled these videos?” she asked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From SalonMagazine.CoM
Tubbythumping
<Picture>
THEY GET KNOCKED DOWN, THEY GET UP AGAIN. BUT NOT FOR LONG. LET THE
TELETUBBIES BASHING BEGIN.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
BY JOYCE MILLMAN | You may not have heard of "Teletubbies" yet. Savor this
blessed ignorance. On April 6, the mega-hit British children's TV show
premieres on PBS stations in the United States and, soon, you will not be
able to hide from the loathsome rat-baby visages of the four Tubbies: Tinky
Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po.
Am I being cruel? Watch the show. "Teletubbies," which has been airing on
the BBC for a year, is simultaneously vacuous and surreal. It's the first
show specifically aimed at children as young as 1 year old, and it does so
with an inane mix of goo-goo talk and hallucinatory imagery. The British
media hates the show. Parents hate the show. Child development experts hate
the show (Dorothy Singer of the Yale University Family TV Research and
Consultation Center has come out against "Teletubbies" because the target
audience is too young). PBS president Ervin Duggan hates the show, telling
a national educational television conference last year, "I used to think
'Barney' would make me throw something at the television set. Wait till you
see 'Teletubbies.'"
So why is PBS airing "Teletubbies"? Because it draws a regular viewership
of 2 million in England. Because an estimated $80 million worth of Tubbies
merchandise was sold worldwide last year (the show is also seen in, among
other countries, Australia, South Africa, Israel, the Netherlands and
Singapore). It's a creepy show, educationally suspect, yet here it is,
helping PBS reach that last untapped kids' market. What's next --
programming for fetuses?
Actually, the Teletubbies do look an awful lot like fetuses, with their
huge eyes, oversized upper lips and hairless, smooshy faces. They also look
sort of like an infantilized version of the gray space alien. From an
American perspective, the Teletubbies are a disturbing collision of two of
the most pervasive cultural obsessions of our time, abortion and UFO's.
The Tubbies, played by four actors encased Barneylike in color-coded,
big-bottomed felt suits, cavort in a green rolling meadow strewn with
flowers and live bunnies -- it's like a trippy cross between a Sid and
Marty Krofft puppetland and an Oasis video. The Tubbies live inside a
breast-shaped grass mound, supervised only by a vacuum cleaner named
Noo-Noo. Disembodied adult voices are heard through "voice trumpets,"
periscope-type thingies that pop up out of the ground to signal when it's
time for exercise, naps or meals. In a sunny-side-up version of heinous
parental neglect, the Tubbies eat machinery-dispensed food (Tubby Custard
and Tubby Toast) and exhibit the stunted verbal development ("eh-oh"
instead of "hello") you've read about in cases where a child is, say,
locked in a closet for 10 years. The Tubbies' main activities are playing
peek-a-boo, hugging, falling down and watching TV through the video screens
embedded in their stomachs. Yes. They have TV's for tummies.
The Tubbies apparently receive incoming broadcasts from a mysterious
spinning windmill; the transmission makes the antennae on top of their
heads glow and then one of the Tubbies' tummy-screens will start playing a
video clip of a very young human child doing something like riding a
tricycle or taking care of a pet pony. After it's over the Tubbies cry,
"Again, again!" and the tedious little film is replayed in its entirety,
because babies like repetition, and if you parents have a problem with
that, scold the ads PBS has taken out in magazines and newspapers to
introduce the show, you need to slow down and "connect with your child on a
whole different level. Theirs."
Of course, parents filled the need for repetition quite adequately in the
prehistoric era before "Teletubbies." We read "Goodnight Moon," twice a
night, 365 nights a year, and played pat-a-cake until our brains nearly
imploded from boredom, and we liked it, by gum! Oh sure, Anne Wood, the
British creator of "Teletubbies," may babble earnestly to the press about
her great social mission of creating programming for babies who "are
growing up in a technological world," but the pragmatic comments of Kenn
Viselman, whose itsy bitsy Entertainment Company holds the lucrative U.S.
merchandising rights to "Teletubbies," are a lot more believable. If
parents are using TV as a baby sitter, he told the public broadcasting
magazine Current, "they might as well have a good product." And speaking to
Advertising Age, Viselman (whose bio touts him as the "genius behind the
sales and marketing of 'Thomas the Tank Engine'") said that having
"Teletubbies" running on PBS "is like the Good Housekeeping Seal of
Approval."
Exactly. And that's why it's depressing to see PBS messing with the
parental trust earned through years of conscientious programming like
"Mister Rogers" and "Sesame Street." PBS's advertising for the show seems
designed to assuage parental guilt over using "Teletubbies" as a baby
sitter; the PBS Web site promises that the show will "nourish children's
thinking skills, teach them to listen, help build their curiosity, expand
their imagination and increase their confidence." But absent from that list
is the lesson most important to Wood (whose company, Ragdoll Productions,
has created scores of kids' shows), and to Viselman, and to the BBC and
PBS: "Teletubbies" teaches toddlers how to be good little TV-watching
soldiers.
"Teletubbies" is indoctrination so naked and pure it's almost farcical. On
the show, a human baby's face inside a sunburst in the sky functions as a
visual cue, telling little viewers how they should respond to what they're
seeing. And the tummy-TVs blatantly internalize TV watching, making it a
part of the Tubbies' selves, a part of their doughy couch potato bodies.
"Teletubbies" links TV to all the good things baby loves -- custard and
breasts and full tummies. How unfortunate (snicker, snicker) for PBS that
it's launching "Teletubbies" only a couple of weeks after a widely
publicized Harvard School of Public Health study documenting a correlation
between childhood obesity and excessive TV watching.
But while "Teletubbies" may be bad for babies, the show's not-quite-hidden
agenda and dazed and confused weirdness has inspired some mischievous Tubby
deconstruction among grown-up viewers. A show like Comedy Central's
scatological cartoon phenomenon "South Park," for instance, is its own
graffiti (you can't possibly trash it better than the show trashes itself),
but the bland, jolly fascism of "Teletubbies" practically invites you to
take your best subtextual pot shot. So, to the BBC's dismay, gay groups in
Britain hailed Tinky Winky (the purple one with the coat hanger coming out
of his head) as the first queer hero of children's TV because he often
carries around a big red purse. And on the Web, there are dozens of Tubby
parodies, all of them more clever than the show.
The amusing Teletubbies Conspiracy Site places the Tubbies in an Orwellian
scenario where they "spend most of their lives in abject fear, nervously
awaiting the moment when the omnipresent windmill with its mind controlling
red rays" will single one out to be "subjected to an ordeal of telly
torture as an example to the others." The British humor webzine Palindrome
offers a droll, Monty Pythonesque entry called Teletubbies: The True Story,
which purports to be a natural history journal containing observations
about the mysterious species "Tubbis tele" ("The actual act of Teletubby
procreation has never been observed, although several mating rituals have
been recorded. A common one involves two Teletubbies running towards each
other, then colliding in mid-air ...").
The anti-Tubby jokes are so funny because they're grounded in truth --
"Teletubbies" is indoctrination, it is mind-control, it is a transparent
attempt to institute brand-recognition and consumer craving in the
youngest, most innocent viewers. "To be free to learn, children must be
free to dream," gushes the manifesto for Viselman's itsy bitsy
Entertainment Company.
Free to dream -- as long as they dream of Tubbies.
SALON | April 3, 1998
~~~~~~~~~~~~
>From http://www.falwell.com/jf2/state1.html
Press Statement
Falwell Clarifies Belief That Biblical Antichrist Will Be Jewish
"When I delivered my sermon on the second coming of Jesus Christ last week
to a pastors' conference in Kingsport, Tennessee, I conveyed
biblically-based truths that I have believed and preached nationally for
more than 40 years. In addition to asserting that I personally believe that
Christ could return soon, I stated that the Antichrist may possibly be
alive on the earth today.
"Many evangelicals, including Billy Graham and millions of others, believe
in the imminent, premillennial, pretribulational second coming of Jesus
Christ for all of His Church.
"Since Jesus came to the earth the first time 2,000 years ago as a Jewish
male, many evangelicals believe the Antichrist will, by necessity, be a
Jewish male. This belief is 2,000 years old and has no anti-Semitic roots.
This is simply historic and prophetic orthodox Christian doctrine that many
theologians, Christian and non-Christian, have understood for two
millennia."
"At the outset it should be noted that there is honest disagreement among
evangelical Christians in regards to the background of the antichrist. In
essence, there are three views:
1.The antichrist is not a person at all, but an evil system.
2.The antichrist is a real person and will be a Gentile
3.The antichrist is a real person and will be Jewish
"Of course, no one can be absolutely dogmatic in this matter, but I
personally feel (and have publicly stated) that the third view has more
scriptural support than the previous two.
There are (at least) three scriptural passages that lead me to believe the
Antichrist may be Jewish:
Ezekiel 21:25: And thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come
when iniquity shall have an end.
Daniel 11:37: Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers. . .
John 5:43: I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not: if another
shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.
"The church fathers generally believed in a personal Antichrist. In fact,
one of the most famous, John Chrysostom, (347-407 A.D.) held that the
Antichrist would be a Jewish dictator from the tribe of Dan, based on the
following:
1.Jacob's prophecy upon his son Dan: Dan shall be a serpent by the way, an
adder in the path, that biteth the horse heels, so that his rider shall
fall backward. (Gen. 49:17)
2.Jeremiah's prophecy concerning the tribulation: The snorting of his
horses was heard from Dan: the whole land trembled at the sound. . . for
they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city,
and those that dwell therein. For, behold I will send serpents,
cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you,
saith the Lord. (Jer. 8:16, 17).
3.The tribe of Dan is omitted from the list in Revelation 7. This chapter
records the tribal identity of the 144,000 Hebrew evangelists who will be
saved and called to special service during the tribulation.
"Let me briefly summarize:
•This view is not novel or new.
•It is not without biblical support.
•It is not anti-semitic.
"Since I delivered this Kingsport message, some have felt that my comment
expressing my opinion that the Antichrist will be Jewish could possibly be
construed as anti-Semitic. I did not intend for my sincere belief on this
issue to cause any pain to anyone, Jewish or otherwise. I am strongly
pro-Jewish and pro-Israel. My statement was not dogmatic since no one can
be certain of the identity of the Antichrist. If I had known the statement
would be publicized and misconstrued, I would never have made it. I have
earlier apologized to any persons who were offended thereby, and I restate
that apology now."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jerry Falwell, who has traveled to Israel more than 30 times and has met
often with every Israeli prime minister from Menachem Begin to Benjamin
Netanyahu, is known for his continued and outspoken support of Israel. In
1980, he was presented with the Jabotinsky Centennial Medal by Prime
Minister Begin for his friendship to Israel. Additionally, prominent Jewish
author Merrill Simon wrote and published the book "Jerry Falwell and the
Jews" in 1984, outlining Falwell's unwavering support of Israel through the
years.
This month, Liberty University, for which Falwell serves as founder and
chancellor, sponsored a tour of Israel for 1,500 of the University's
students.
For further information on the second coming of Christ, Jerry Falwell's
sermons on the subject are available verbatim on the Thomas Road Baptist
Church website. Sermons on the Book of Revelation, the Book of Daniel, and
prophecy in general, may be accessed at www.trbc.org .
MEDIA NOTE: To request an interview with Jerry Falwell, contact Laura
Swickard at (770) 813-0000.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
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