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Comrade Big Bird
PBS Peddles New Online Leftist Indoctrination to Children
[by Mac Johnson] 10/18/05

Back when she would still admit she was a liberal, Hillary Clinton once famously observed that “It Takes a Village” to raise even a single child. And a whole village is just what liberals believe is necessary to counteract the influence of the child’s parents, who may be dangerously “un-progressive” in their teachings.

Or maybe it takes a whole world to raise your child for you. If so, PBS, the Public Broadcasting System, has just the world to do it: EekoWorld! Built with your tax dollars, EekoWorld is a whole complex of games, cartoons, and narrated stories aimed at young children on the “PBS Kids” website.

“PBSkids.org” is so heavily promoted during children’s programming on PBS, that it was among the first complex word sets that my son learned to speak. Whenever the third parent, I mean “the television,” would sing the PBS Kids jingle, “P-B-S Kids!” my little internet junkie would quickly add “dot org!”

Keep in mind that this was before Buster the Rabbit decided to teach the PBS kids about Lesbian couples making children and maple syrup in the mountains of Vermont, so I didn’t think anything about letting the boy, now 4 years old, watch unlimited PBS, which I figure I’ve paid for already anyway. Plus, various Muppets and kind neighbors did a fair job of adding to my meager knowledge of reading, writing and bottlecap collections back when I myself was a cub left to the tender flickering embrace of the third parent.

I wasn’t, therefore, very concerned about the boy seeing blatant political propaganda while he watched PBS. I mean: it’s children’s programming. It’s not like I was letting him watch Frontline or Bill Moyers or anything really bad.

Oh, how naïve I was.

The invasion of my home by the joint forces of EekoWorld began about 14 seconds into my shower one morning. The bathroom door opened. I heard a series of tiny footsteps walk across the floor and there was a knock on the opaque shower door, about three feet off the ground.

“What?” I asked. “Um, Dad, you need to get out of the shower now. You’re taking too long,” replied the boy. “Why --do you have something at school today that we need to be early for?” I said. The very serious reply came back “Um, No. But you are using too much water, and that could kill all the fish.”

“Hmmm….” I wondered. It all became clear the next day.

“Um, Dad, what does ‘NO’ look like again?” I was asked. You see, the host of EekoWorld, Cheeko, had asked the boy a question for extra points and the answer was apparently supposed to be “No.” The questions in the EekoWorld game are spoken, but the child must click on the written answers. Wow, I thought, good old PBSkids.org was teaching the boy to read while I spent some quality time with FoxNews in the other room. So I went into the next room to see what game he was playing and show him “No.”

There, spread out across the screen of my trusty iMac, was EekoWorld -- a paradise over which my boy had total control of all policies, decisions, and development. Right there, I should have known that a liberal had come up with the concept for the game.

Cheeko, a winged monkey with the body of a shark and the tail of a snake (whom I’m fairly sure might be the beast from Revelation, by the way) was hovering over EekoWorld waiting for an answer to his question, which he repeated periodically in a voice that sounded a lot like Eleanor Clift in the midst of a "McLaughlin Group" free-for-all with Pat Buchanan, but even more shrill (and who knew that was possible?).

Cheeko cawed forth the question again: “People want to drill for oil in this area even though it is a wildlife preserve. What is your vote?” Below the freakish FrankenMonkey were two potential votes, “YES” or “NO.” The Texas part of me immediately took over. “Well, yes, for Pete’s sake,” I thought. I’d drill for oil through the family cemetery if I thought it would reduce our dependence on foreign oil by 0.00001%. So I clicked “Yes,” much to the horror of the boy, who knew very well what “No” looks like, but just wanted me to come play the game with him. “NO, DAD, DON”T!” he cried. But it was too late.

Cheeko pounced on us. Being a liberal abomination, he was too worried about our self-esteem to tell us that we were wrong, but squawked out instead “Here’s a better choice. Oil keeps our homes comfortable and provides us with electricity, but removing oil from a wildlife preserve can hurt the land, plants, and animals. -8 points.” “MINUS EIGHT POINTS!!!???” the boy shouted, then looked at me as if I had stepped on his goldfish and said “Why did you do that, Dad?” tOR

copyright 2005 Mac Johnson

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