and this is one more piece of a very large pile of evidence that it's working. The pro-prudery contingent of American society is going to take every opportunity to pressure people into going along with them and stigmatize as much as possible anyone who resists.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. RT you're right, the show host's past is irrelevant and worrying about it is a double-standard.

Here's my concern about the situation:

when the hell did people start outsourcing bedtime books to the TV? Ugh!

If PBS didn't can Melanie Martinez, the wingnuts would have used her as the figurehead for their next "Axe PBS" campaign. Sadly, instead of standing by their host, PBS figured it was better to toss her overboard.

And when his alter ego Paul Rubens was caught masturbating in a NY theatre, he lost HIS gig too.

The Murphy, Rock and Williams examples are irrelevant - there entertainment is targeted to adults, not children. When their voices are used in animated kiddie flicks, they are not being presented as their entertainment personna, a brand marketed directly to kids. In the cases cited by Traister, the cartoons are the stars. Kids neither know nor care who is doing the voices.

PBS fired Martinez to avoid losing funding when the religious right goes after them for retaining an employee who openly talks about engaging in anal sex. It was politics, not personal. But I daresay that most parents, given the choice, would vote to have her removed too. In this era of "better be 10000000% safe than sorry when it comes to protecting my kids" it's not all that surprising.

There is no evidence of sexism here - just evidence that softcore adult porn humor does not mix with kiddie programming. Having Martinez in the host spot mixes the two, like it or not. All PBS would need is some vlogster to put the bit about anal sex up on the net, neatly edited with one of her muppety bedtime stories. Leno and Letterman and Steward would pick up on it in a flash, and invite the sweet-hot Martinez on the show. Public broadcasting funding is hard enough to come by without that sort of exposure.

I think PBS did what most of us would do in the same situation. Harsh, yes. But it's not as if Martinez didn't make her own bed on this one.

All of the examples of people being funny were men being funny, not women. Women are supposed to be chaste and pure if taking a job in children's entertainment. Hell, even the president had his "youthful indiscretions." But you can bet if it were Hillary Clinton with the same alcohol and drug background, you would never hear the end of it.

The theatre where Rubens was arrested was in Florida.

Yes, if you're going to be a PBS Kids personality, you must meet higher standards. It sets itself up as a safe harbor for a reason, and has done so for a couple of generations now. Where's the problem?

Robin Williams isn't just a cartoon voice to kids. He also appears in movies that are marketed to families, such as *Mrs. Doubtfire* and *Flubber.* The fact is that Disney and 20th Century Fox apparently has no problem hiring a guy who made sexually explicit comedic material in the past to appear in children's material.

It would be one thing if Martinez was making the sexual explicit parodies while she was working on the children's show, but she made them several years ago. And the parodies were clearly not directed at children. And she told them about it. PBS just chickened out.

What's the problem? The problem is that PBS is being hypocritical. They had no problem broadcasting Shining Time Station when George Carlin was on it.

Bravo, Ms. Traister! I knew something like that needed to be said, but I was too tired to try to articulate it myself. Now we need to find an e-mail address or fax number for the ass who sacked Ms. Martinez and make him or her sorry.

I've seen the "Technical Virgin" bit that you describe, and I found Ms. Martinez perfectly charming. I'd be glad to have my 3-year-old listen to her bedtime stories, if I could find him.

Howard Runyon

Lake Placid, NY

And that is this: The freaking satires were on the 'net SEVEN YEARS AGO. I mean, really, who gives a shit anymore?! If she had done them WHILE working on the kid's show, that would be another story. But the statute of limitations on self-righteous indignation should have run out at least four years ago if not more.

Oh, and one more thing. Who gives a flying fuck what the right wing would or would not do?? If anyone at PBS had any balls they would have thanked Michelle for her candor, quietly kept her on board and then, IF the right wing shot off its mouth, told them all to SHOVE IT.

This is why we lib-dems get no respect. We haven't earned any in quite some time.

Martinez was sacked because she's not as big a star as some of the other personalities mentioned in the post. Her salary is smaller, she's worth less to PBS, so they sacked her. Hey, this is America, where people are measured by their value in cash, not, say, talent or intelligence!

a video on being pro-life that included some graphic image of dead fetuses or parody on stem cell research? Would she have still been dismissed?

Oh my god. You're not -- no, you couldn't be -- you are not seriously proposing there's a double standard at work here, are you? What kind of twisted sister would even THINK such a thing!!??

Sorry. Ahem. I'm sure you didn't mean it. Of course not....

Regarding Mr. Jello-Pudding-Eating-Mofo: it may be hard to imagine, but I'm old enough to remember that back before Cliff Huxtable, Coke, Jello, I Spy and all the rest, Cos used to put on a nightclub act that was bluer than Vegas twilight and more profane than a Vegas sunrise. (Recordings are still available.)

If the Purity Police had been on the job in the early 70s, those acts would have automatically knocked him out of the running and beyond the pale when it came to creating a kids' shows (EdD or no EdD). And we would have never had Fat Albert, which was some of the best children's TV of the decade.

One of the privileges of being a grown-up is that we're entitled to talk among ourselves in ways that aren't appropriate for children to hear. If we can't trust our kids around people who've been known to discuss sex in crude terms while in adult company, my dad should have lost both his master teaching credential and custody of all three of his offspring. So would 4/5 of his buddies in the teacher's lounge, the walls of which were stained irrecoverably with cigarette smoke and the residue of decades of incandecently sulfurous tale-telling. (The children -- what will become of the children?)

PBS lost my support a few years back -- a decision they continue to confirm for me at least a couple times a year by doing shit like this. I doubt they'd appreciate my observations on the relative tightness of their own anal sphincters.