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Spongebob Squares Off

By now you’ve heard the ridiculous allegations regarding the lovably happy SpongeBob SquarePants. Now the voice of SpongeBob has come out in his character’s defense. Tom Kenny finds the accusations, well, somewhat amusing.

What reaction can one have except for gales of hysterical laughter at these people’s wrongheadedness and irrational thinking?” Kenny asked. “I love it. I’m glad these people are around because with the coronation going on, we all need something to laugh about.

He even takes it a step further and goes right to the source.

I look around and, speaking as a parent of two children, I don’t need people like Dr. Dobson policing what my children see in school. You don’t get any more of a normal American lifestyle than me. I go to soccer practices. I’ve got two kids. My wife and I live in the suburbs. As a parent, I look around this world that seems to be a mess, and a lot of it is due to people being intolerant of races, nationalities, creeds and lifestyles.

There you have it. Straight from the sponge.

SpongeBob Squarepants – 2008

Hm. Another fun one, Mike. =:)

And Scott, I will wholeheartedly vote with you in 2008!! =:)

Being an avid fan of the small yellow square dude, I felt I had to comment on this. I absolutely love the cartoons and spend countless hours watching them (and subsequently recounting them) with my progeny. That being said, the group responsible for the cartoon does push the envelope occasionally, as do virtually all Nickelodeon products, it seems. Most of the time this is in an effort to gross kids (and their parents) out.

I absolutely do believe that a very deliberate agenda is in place and is being acted out by the homosexual community to influence the next generation (read: my kids and yours) into accepting homosexuality as a perfectly acceptable lifestyle, regardless of how their parents feel. A study into the curriculum changes in California, for instance, over the past 30 years will reveal this pretty obviously.

I absolutely do agree with Dr. Dobson on most things. I’m not sure where this anti-Spongebob thing has come from, but I’m not sure if I agree with anyone in saying that Spongebob is trying to influence anyone about homosexuality, or that he has any homosexual tendencies in the cartoons. The only episode that I can think of that would even approach this would be the one where Spongebob and Patrick found a helpless little baby clam and decided to raise him. Spongebob was the over-worked, under-appreciated wife and Patrick was the slovenly, insensitive husband who pretended to go to work everyday but in reality took his briefcase full of ice cream and sat under his rock for 8 hours, watching stupid television movies.

I know nothing about the song that is being objected to, nor the group that is producing the song, and probably that’s the more important issue here anyway. If an otherwise lovable character (i.e. the square, yellow guy) is being used to further the agenda of a group that is trying to influence anyone’s children, then to that, I STRONGLY object.

Also, let it be said that I never entirely trusted Tinky Winky anyway…. =:)

In defense of the people being accused of accusing the Sponge
My friend Mike has brought up the Spongebob issue.

Here’s the thing that bothers me about this. Once again, the media has incorrectly reported the real situation. If you’re interested, you can read the cause of all this hullabaloo here. In fa…

Once again, I’m not offended by your comments—they’re your opinion, but I have to make a rebuttal.

Given that the statement was made at a black tie event celebrating the president Dobson helped re-elect, I’m inclined to believe that his agenda is being exposed more than anything else.

And if I had to guess, I think what really set him off is the fact that some organization with the word “family” in the title decided to advocate tolerance for something he apparently doesn’t want you (read: you) to tolerate. My personal impression is that he believes only he and the group he represents are allowed to use the word “family” and they want tolerance to mean something that’s only convenient to them (as well as most church/state issues, but that’s another day). This strikes me as more than a little hypocritical since everything I ever learned about Jesus in private school had to do with unconditional love (a.k.a. tolerance) for everyone. Isn’t that a beautiful thing?

Now, here’s the bottom of it for me. I have known many gay and lesbian people over the years—classmates, friends, neighors, co-workers, and family members. I don’t have any inclination to listen to anyone question their acceptance. It’s probably something they have a hard enough time dealing with themselves. And anyone who gets on a soapbox to convince me otherwise has already lost the argument.

I realized today that if I spent as much time blogging on my site as I do commenting on yours, my blog would look more impressive. =:) But per your comments on Jesus’ tolerance….

Websters defines tolerance, among other definitions is “Leeway for variation from a standard.”

Jesus never taught unconditional tolerance, I don’t think. He lived out God’s unconditional love on earth–true enough–but what he did not do was show unconditional tolerance for people who were misleading and misinterpreting God’s standards, I think. In fact, I just read a section in Matthew (Matthew 23, if I recall correctly) this last week with my daughter’s Bible Quiz team where Jesus spent an entire chapter pronouncing seven “woes” (the equivalent of the most severe kind of denouncing, if I understand it correctly) on the teachers and leaders of the people for the evil they were doing. That doesn’t sound horribly tolerant to me. =:) Jesus’ life was indeed a beautiful thing–the most beautiful thing. But what it wasn’t was a milquetoast existance, and I take offense when people try to paint Jesus as a soft, marshmallowey guy who tried to not offend people.

I seriously doubt that Jesus would have stood back in “tolerance” if he were to have seen people trying to influence children improperly. And that’s the core of the issue to me (and I thought I read Dr. Dobson as intending to be interpreted as this too)–people are trying to influence children (read: children, not adults) to believe a certain agenda. It’s not you or I they’re trying to influence (specifically speaking about the issue at hand here–the video made using lovable cartoon characters to be shown at 61,000 public and private elementary schools throughout the United States). They’re making it to be shown to kids.

And what gets me most of all is the way this was mis-represented in the media, from the way it sounds. Dr. Dobson was painted as a fanatic who was trying to accuse a cute little yellow spongey guy (whom I absolutely love to watch, as do my kiddos) of being less than innocent. That’s not at all what happened, from what I can see. Yet Dr. Dobson will be remembered as a lunatic because of how he was handled by the media, it seems, and that strikes me as unfair. And based on your past blog entries, I know you’re not unfamiliar with the idea of the media engine being less than honest and objective in all they do. =:)

Dr. Dobson wasn’t calling Spongebob a bad egg. He was calling into question a group using Spongebob as a marketing tool.

Or am I misunderstanding what happened? I’m basing my statements on what I read from Dr. Dobson’s website, so I’m assuming I’m reading the same thing that started this whole controversy. Maybe I’m incorrect?

Also, in other news, I need to break down and buy a snowblower, or alternatively one of your extra shop-vacs. =:D

Oh–also…. Is there a setting somewhere in wordpress that notifies people when their post has been replied to? pMachine did it on your old blog, but I’m not notified that someone has replied to my comment from your blog now. I’ll see if I can find out how to turn this on….

Hm. To my question above, I found this, though I’m not sure if it works.

Well, I’m not going to argue the Bible with you. Everything in it (and just about everything else) is open to interpretation. Let’s just say I believe your example does resonate, but probably not for the reason you intended. In my 12 years of religious education, I picked up one thing that I always thought was pretty straight forward, “Love your neighbor as you do yourself.” I personally see nothing inconsistent with that and the tolerance pledge that appears on the organization’s website. That is, I think, what all of this is about.

Don’t know about those other things. I’ll look into them when I have time. Today is the day I cook and eat chili and convince myself that the Eagles are going to win (until they lose), so I’ll be a bit pre-occupied.