To Be Yellow & Full of Holes
My attention was finally attracted to this story (Muddling SpongeBob: Gay or straight?) in The National Business Review [New Zealand] about the whole SpongeBob thing for reasons that we'll get to in a moment.
But first, a second-hand excerpt from an interview that The Syracuse Post-Standard had with Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob:
Let me ask you, who would you rather go bowling with, SpongeBob and his friends or the Rev. James Dobson? Who would you rather go out with and have a few beers? Probably the only common ground I have with the Rev. James Dobson is that I haven't seen the video, and I'll bet he hasn't either. All he knows (Kenny dropped into an angry backwoods voice) is that it's a little yellow guy full of holes who's saying it's OK for men to be with men.
Words to live by, I'd say.
But the real reason why my attention was attracted to this article finally is that it was given as the source for the revelation that Dobson's group employs a "homosexuality detection expert". Here's the relevant paragraph:
A "homosexuality detection expert" at the similarly conservative Family Research Council told the NY Times that words like "tolerance" and "diversity" are part of a "coded language that is regularly used by the homosexual community."
Fascinating! I'd like to point out that I am currently looking for gainful employment, and when it comes to "homosexualtiy detection" I think I can claim to be an expert — I certainly have practised long enough to be pretty good at it, if I do say so myself.
While we're at it, I'm also pretty good at wacky-right-wing-Christian-extremist-bullshit detection, too, if anyone wants to pay me to do that (although, to be honest, it's not really all that hard.)