The gay teletubby
[Clipping: "Teletubby trouble: is Tinky Winky gay?", Dallas Morning News]
Creation Information
Dallas Morning News February 21, 1999.
Context
This clipping is part of the collection entitled: Resource Center LGBT Collection of the UNT Libraries and was provided by the UNT Libraries Special Collections to the UNT Digital Library, a digital repository hosted by the UNT Librari
Yep, the Purple Teletubby Was Gay
Screen Time is Slate’s pop-up blog about children’s TV, everywhere kids see it.
Jerry Falwell made his living finding gay people where they didn’t belong. “Remember … homosexuals do not reproduce,” the televangelist and activist warned his followers in 1981. “They recruit!” He claimed to have confronted President Carter about why he employed “practicing homosexuals” in the White Residence in 1980. When Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom character came out of the closet in 1997, he called her “Ellen Degenerate.”
So when Falwell claimed in 1999 to have discovered that one of the Teletubbies was gay, it seemed like yet another example of his proprietary merge of viciousness and absurdity. Teletubbies, a British import for preschoolers that aired on PBS between 1998 and 2008, was so harmless it was almost a parody of children’s television. It featured four rotund creatures who lived in a stylized English countryside where they spent their time eating toast and custard, rolling around in meadows, and babbling in high-pitched baby speak. To modern sensibilities, the most offensive thing about them is that they all had television screens embedded in their bel
The Guy Who Played Tinky Winky, the ‘Gay’ Purple Teletubby, Has Died
Four days ago, Simon Barnes, the 52-year-old player best known for playing Tinky Winky, the purple creature in the BBC preschool children’s series Teletubbies, passed away, giving us pause to remember Winky’s legacy as the “the gay Teletubby.”
In a 1999 article by homophobic televangelist Jerry Falwell published in his magazine National Liberty Journal, Falwell declared that Tinky Winky was gay.
“The character, whose voice is obviously that of a boy, has been create carrying a red purse,” Falwell wrote. “He is purple, the gay movement color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle, the gay parade symbol.”
First off, purple isn’t the gay pride tint — it’s lavender or rainbow. Second off, Winky carried a “magic bag,” not a “purse.” But otherwise, Falwell’s absurd and alarmist claim hit a nerve.
Outspoken gay gossip columnist Michael Must declared, “Tinky Winky is … a great message to kids: not only that it’s okay to be queer , but the importance of being well-accessorized.” But even before Falwell’s article, The Advocate had called Tinky Winky, a “big, fabulous fag,” a British media r
By Adam Easton |
Tinky Winky was once attacked by the late US Rev Jerry Falwell |
The spokesperson for children's rights in Poland, Ewa Sowinska, singled out Tinky Winky, the purple character with a triangular aerial on his head.
"I noticed he was carrying a woman's handbag," she told a magazine. "At first, I didn't realise he was a boy."
EU officials possess criticised Polish government policy towards homosexuals.
Ms Sowinska wants the psychologists to make a recommendation about whether the children's show should be air on public television.
Poland's authorities have recently initiated a series of moves to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality among the nation's children.
Tinky Winky's psychological evaluation is being treated fairly light-heartedly by many people here.
One radio station asked its listeners to vote for the most suspicious children's exhibit.
Even Ms Sowinska has backtr
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