The Wiggles are coming for your children.
Well, technically they’ve always been coming for your children, in that they are a bunch of musicians who write and perform music intended to entertain and educate preschoolers.
But now they’re really coming for your children — at least according to Rod Dreher of The American Conservative, who in a column this past Sunday ripped into the Australian kids’ band, declaring them to be subversive “soft totalitarians” trying deliberately to warp young children’s minds.
What you are seeing here is another manifestation of soft totalitarianism. I know what some of you are saying: there he goes again, that right-wing nut, getting bent out of shape over a kid’s show. Sorry, but this is a big deal. They are trying to colonize the minds of pre-school age children with this gender-ideology lie, which seeks to destroy the essence of man. It’s disgusting. They really are coming for our children. Do not be fooled. This is culture war at its purest: to conquer the minds of kids so small they don’t even know that they are being indoctrinated.
So what exactly have these dastardly Australians done? In an attempt to appeal to a more diverse audience, the band has added four new members, three of them women, and one of them an indigenous woman. They’ve also added some new characters to their show, including a non-binary unicorn who uses “they/them” pronouns.
It’s this last addition to the WIggles that’s got Dreher so pig-biting mad. “Why can’t kids just be kids?” he asks. “Why do the sick, twisted elites of Anglophone culture have to force their obsessions onto little ones?”
To Dreher, this means (culture) war.
We are living through a great unveiling. You can only live in denial for so long about the rottenness. Nobody can be neutral going forward. You must choose. Refusing to choose is a choice.
Well, it’s Team Wiggles for me.
Oh, and here’s the scene of their YouTube show featuring the new unicorn and their pronouns. (It should be set to start playing right where Shirley Shawn the Unicorn makes their first appearance.) This may not be for everybody; I found it a bit like listening to fingernails scraping on a blackboard. But hey, I’m not a 4 year old, and the 4-year-olds apparently just love this shit.
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My kids watched the Wiggles sometimes when they were preschoolers/kindergarten age. I always thought they were annoying. The Wiggles, that is, not my children, although my children were sometimes annoying. Other than that, I have no comment, other than the far right is afraid of everything and thinks most forms of entertainment “turn children gay.”
Ah nothing puts to bed that Ocker stereotype more than an Australian kid’s TV show presenter saying “Now would be a good time to nip out to the toilet.”
Pfft. That clip was nothing. Does this guy expect the generation who grew up with Pee Wee’s Playhouse to fear their children watching that?
@weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee
Heck, Pee-Wee’s Playhouse had a Church of the Subgenius reference (there’s a picture of Bob on the wall at the end of the show). My family being strange, even as kids we caught the reference.
If the Wiggles destroy all the Essence of Man, what will all those louche females on Lythion smoke from those neat hookahs?
Because my father yelled a lot and never made any sense at all when it came to raising children, I was very touched by the pirate-narrator, who showed that he understands a child’s needs by pointing out to the viewer that the break would be a good time to use the bathroom or get something to eat.
*ahem*
there he goes again, that right-wing nut, getting bent out of shape over a kid’s show.
That will be all.
No wait:
A broken clock is right twice a day, I guess (except the ‘going forward’-part). And a pretty solid summary of Sartre’s Existentialism.
@Nequam: That gif will never lose relevance.
Rod Dreher wouldn’t like the fabulous cartoon show Bluey then either, as the dad (Bandit) works from home, and the mum (Chili) has a part time job at the airport, and the two girl pups (Bluey and Bingo) are very imaginative and playful. I mean, both blue heeler pups are girls! Their dad plays games with them and he loves their mum! How can such happy loving families even exist?
The irony is, theres always been gender non-specific characters in childrens shows. Usually the mute characters (as voice depth gives away the game). The idea being is that the child is free to assign whatever gender they wanted to the character (If the child wants them to be a boy, its a boy, or if the child wants them to be a girl, its a girl, and any creative variation on that, too.
Conservaives really do have a paranoic mindset, alas.
@Schnookums: Pee-Wee’s Playhouse also had some music done for them by The Residents!
Well, I guess someone had to replace Tinky Winky in the ongoing moral panic over Who’s Brainwashing The Children Into Thinking They’re Okay Just The Way They Are?
Wait till he finds out that Thomas the Tank Engine, the most stodgy, authoritarian kids show ever, has a character who appears to be genderfluid:
The more things change the more they stay the same. All this malarkey about little kids getting confused about sexual identity-roles-activities is just rubbish.
Waaaaay back in 1966, I taught Sunday School. One of the other young teachers had been going out with her boyfriend since they were both about 14. She got pregnant, They were busily arranging for a quick “shotgun” wedding when he went home to his country family. Dad persuaded him that she probably had slept with some other bloke and he wouldn’t want to bring up another man’s child, would he. So she was stuck with being single and pregnant (back then the presumption was that she’d have the baby adopted, but we’re not to that point yet). We all secretly rejoiced that she’d dodged a bullet with a bloke we’d never much liked being so weak he couldn’t stand up against this, but she was pretty unhappy.
Anyway, the joyless, heartless elders of the church tried to decree that she couldn’t continue teaching Sunday School because being pregnant and unmarried would ‘influence” innocent young minds. We tried – successfully in the end – to point out that all these little ones universally called all grownup women Mrs despite the fact that most of us running the Sunday School were under 20 and unmarried. They had no real idea that grownups would be anything else. If you’re a teacher then you’re a Mrs.
It doesn’t matter what the prevailing social circumstances are, these morons always, always, get it wrong. You’d think that people who claim to be so keen on children would understand something about the way little minds work, but it seems not.
I, too, found this clip to be like fingernails on a chalkboard and could not watch more than 20 seconds. However, I was able to determine in this time that Shirley Shawn is not Death, Destroyer of Cultures, but in fact a yellow and pink plastic figurine being moved by a dude in a pirate costume. What a gross disappointment after all that buildup by this guy. ?
Shirley Shawn might be named after Shirley Strachan of the Skyhooks, and Shirl’s neighbourhood. Does Shirley sing?
Early boomers withstood a male clown named Clarabelle on Howdy Doody. And Generation Jones somehow survived Lidsville, with the late Billie Hayes’ portrayal of the male Weenie(!) the Genie.
Speaking of Sid and Marty Krofft, here’s another message I imagine Dreher would deplore (although perhaps he’d approve the Nazi-coded rat?):
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i7rAaYFFeZk
As opposed to this guy who is totally unaware that he was ever indoctrinated.
I nearly wrote “blissfully unaware,” but he doesn’t sound blissful.
As for corrupting young minds, I remember Captain Pugwash, Master Bates and Seaman Stanes.
@ shiela
Unfortunately, that’s a bit of an urban legend. John Ryan, actually sued a few newspapers over it!
https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/captain-pugwash-creator-traumatised-lies-9466439
That does however give me an excuse to post this. And what would Mr Dreher think of George!!!
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1atuz
@Sheila Crosby:
No, you don’t:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/captain-pugwash-double-meanings/
As for Rod Dreher, why does he think “the essence of man” is so easily destroyed? That’s pretty insulting to men. I’m not that fragile, but then again I’m not a conservative.
@Alan, @Moggie
Oops. Sorry.
Probably what I remember is the controversy.
Thanks for putting me right.
“Essence of Man” sounds like Jordan Peterson’s new fragrance line. A pungent melange of boot leather, “musk”, and fresh Nantucket lobster.
Somehow, I really don’t think a unicorn that uses they/them will affect the “essence of men” at all. A toy unicorn. A toy of an imaginary creature.. This is just too stupid for words.
@Sheila Crosby; @Alan Robertshaw; @Moggie:
Here in Yankistan, we had the legendary shenanigans of Soupy Sales—such as the time he asked his little viewers to send him pictures of dead Presidents from Mommy’s purse and Daddy’s wallet:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/greenmail/
Urban legend also credited Sales with a number of double-entendres supposedly Snuck Under The Radar:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dirty-job/
re: Legendary scandals
Probably not even in the same ballpark, but there is an urban legend of sorts her in Finland that the local Donald Duck magazine (Aku Ankka) was “canceled” in the seventies because Donald doesn’t wear bottoms. There are several versions of this, mostly that places (like libraries or clubs) had ended their subscriptions, and some versions say it had nothing to do with clothes but was because of Donald and Daisy’s sinful relationship. In reality it was just a rumour that got started when a youth center canceled its subscription because for budget reasons.
Having read of this, I once corrected a teacher who recounted some version of this as a true story and got countered with, “I was there! I know it happened!”