The Groomers are Triggered: Viral "Blue's Clues" Criticism Video Hurts Feelings
/Two weeks ago, I released a video on Tiktok covering the topic of “nostalgia bait,” specifically with Blue’s Clues, a famous children’s television show on Nickelodeon. I duetted a video of Steve Burns, who recently reprised the role of Steve, Blue’s original owner, to give closure to fans after his abrupt departure.
In my video, I explained the genius of Blue’s Clues appealing to their past fans, so they feel a desire to share Blue’s Clues with their children. However, there is content on Blue’s Clues that is not age appropriate. I mentioned three specific things: the pansexual flag, a drag queen leading a pride parade, and the purposeful intention of showcasing every type of family possible besides a “traditional” family.
The video received 384k on Tiktok and 569k on Facebook, and the vast majority of commenters believe it is not age appropriate for preschoolers, meaning ages 3-5. Even people within the LGBT community have expressed that. However, I have received pushback. Some have even accused LGBT members who agreed with me of being self-haters.
The reason for this appears to be that critics are taking it too personal. You shouldn’t need a little blue dog and toddlers to validate your sexuality or your identity. You have to be bigger than that, your life has to be more important than that, and it has to mean more than that.
It’s not about you. I tried to tackle this subject while being the least offensive as possible, to avoid conversations in the weeds. This is about age-appropriate content for children and the increasingly hostile desire from third parties to supersede parental rights and protection.
Parents, of course, have the option of not having their kids sit down in front of a television or leaving them alone with a tablet. That’s why I made the video, so parents could be empowered to make informed decisions. But there’s an epidemic of politicians and activists who resent informed parents. The recent Virginia governor’s race was hotly contested after former governor Terry McAuliffe was pressed on a debate stage about a bill he vetoed. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decision,” McAuliffe said. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
News commentators like Juan Williams tried to defend McAuliffe by turning it into a racial issue, as if parents wanted to take books like Beloved out of schools because of depictions of slavery. It was their dishonest push-back against parents who dislike Critical Race Theory. The truth is, the bill McAuliffe vetoed was meant to give parents the heads-up if their students were assigned books with sexual content, and give them the option of having something else assigned.
Parents also found other sexually explicit content in their children’s libraries, and it helped fuel the fire to grant Republican Glenn Youngkin a victory in a very blue state.
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Let the snowflakes in your life know.
Critics in my comments have said, the children might as well be exposed because they will be eventually anyway. Well, having a defeatist attitude isn’t a good way to parent. It’s your job to protect and prepare your children for the world. How a parent decides to teach their kid is their business, but it certainly isn’t Blue’s Clues’ decision. Well, what if a child is in a family with members of the LGBT community? Parental discretion is up to the parent. You, obviously, have to teach what is best for your child. But if you want to expose someone else’s child because you don’t want to be made uncomfortable, that is known as a “you problem.” You’re an adult, or you believe yourself to be one. Deal with it.
Critics have also taken issue with the accusation of drag queens and pansexuality not being age-appropriate. They took issue with my description of pansexuals having “no sexual limitations,” and claim it’s about loving people beyond their bodies. Well, I love a lot of people despite what they look like and beyond their private parts, but I wouldn’t engage in a sexual or romantic relationship with them. That wasn’t a “friendship is magic flag.”
Drag queens are also not meant to be mainstream. You don’t have to take my word for it. RuPaul said it. “It breaks the fourth wall, and it mocks our culture and identity: how much you have, where you’re from, your economic background. Drag mocks all of that. It’s the antithesis of mainstream.” With that in mind, why would you highlight something like this for preschoolers while children are building their identities? Drag is essentially a minstrel show, but instead of blackface, it’s men mocking womanhood and femininity.
Critics claim it’s necessary to have pansexuals and drag queens on Blue’s Clues to teach tolerance and acceptance. I think it’s sad that this generation lacks any sort of imagination. They don’t know how to teach a lesson without being on the nose and throwing in everything, including the kitchen sink. Films like The Land Before Time taught children about accepting people’s differences without drag or genitals. They did it with dinosaurs. It’s clear activists, including the writers and animators, are crafting content to validate themselves and virtue signal. After all, if my niece saw any of the pride flags, she wouldn’t understand them. The adults are doing it for themselves, and to open a doorway. As the San Francisco gay man’s choir sang, “We’re coming for your children.” Parents see this as a form of grooming.
Lastly, critics insist that heterosexuals and “traditional families” are featured all the time. There wasn’t a need for Blue’s Clues to showcase one during their pride parade. But if you wanted to show that a family of two daddies, two mommies, queens, trans, and so on were just like your family, wouldn’t you show that for comparison? The parade was a counting exercise, and there were no straight people represented until number nine. Even then, they were only “allies.” It was a curious observation.
And since mainstream organizations like Black Lives Matter made it a mission to “dismantle cis-gender privilege” and “disrupt nuclear families,” I’m always a little suspicious. After all, BLM’s financial backing decisions are largely focused on queer communities, and the drag queen’s microphone had a black power symbol on it. Many of the racial identity political actors also hold a disdain for the traditional family. In the infamous “Whiteness in America” infographic, created by the Smithsonian’s African American History Museum, a nuclear family makes it on the list. And why shouldn’t it? The mother of intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw, is also one of the founders of Critical Race Theory. Much of the ideology surrounding oppression Olympics overlaps.
I’ve been called a homophobe a lot over the past two weeks, and I don’t honestly care. Most of the negativity comes from groomers and a bunch of confused kids who feel as though you’re denying their very existence if you do not acknowledge their identity. Well, it’s not about me. It’s certainly not about their fragile egos or lack of self-esteem. It’s about our children while at one of the most vulnerable and malleable times in their lives. I wanted to inform parents, and I did my job.
Blue’s Clues can continue to virtue signal, but they’ll do that with fewer viewers. That’s their right, and that will continue to be the parents’ right.
