They called it “Bustergate.”
In 2005, the PBS children’s series “Postcards from Buster” used a government grant promoting diversity to feature an animated rabbit who trotted the globe visiting all kinds of different kids—Muslim, Eskimo and Mormon among them.But when Buster tried to introduce impressionable viewers to a sweet little girl from Vermont who happened to have two mommies, Buster was bustered. And the popular “Arthur” spinoff lost more than its diversity grant. Before Margaret Spellings was even sworn in as President Bush’s incoming secretary of education, she threatened to pull government funding unless distribution of the “Buster” episode was halted.
“Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in this episode,” Spellings wrote in a letter that strong-armed then-PBS CEO Pat Mitchell into submission.
“I guess they didn’t want it that diverse,” joked Cusi Cram, an “Arthur” staff writer at the time and now playwright of the Denver Center Theatre Company’s satire on the whole ugly affair, “Dusty and the Big Bad World.”
Mitchell’s capitulation helped bring about her own downfall at PBS. But Cram said the incident ignited a lasting climate of fear among public-television programmers wary of offending conservative government sensibilities.
Some would say that’s the very definition of censorship.
Bustergate was one of the dicier chapters in the post-election Bush culture wars that most remember for Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction and Focus on the Family boss James Dobson’s attack on SpongeBob SquarePants. The New York Times’ Frank Rich called Spellings the leader of a group of “moral values zealots” who were conducting inane and idiotic witch hunts. “Ms. Spellings’ threats against PBS are only the latest chapter in a continuing saga at an education department that increasingly resembles an authoritarian government’s ministry of information,” Rich wrote in February 2005.
And to think, all this over an 11-minute “Buster” episode that featured a kid from Vermont who skis and makes maple syrup. “The moms were there for a blip,” said Cram. “Buster never even comments about it.”
Cram’s thinly veiled new play is set within the most popular animated PBS children’s TV show in America. But when animated host “Dusty” goes to visit a family with two daddies, the government brings the hammer down hard on the genial little dustball.
But Cram didn’t set out to write a play that merely skewered Spellings.
“It seemed an interesting way to explore why people would be afraid of something like this,” said Cram. “But the play does try to be balanced. It’s really about very complicated people struggling to understand people who are different from them. People who are trying really hard to do the right thing — and not always knowing what that is.”
Cram wanted a humanized secretary of education who sincerely wonders: What is appropriate for parents to teach their children, and what is appropriate for them to learn from their televisions?
“I think that is a valuable question, because if a kid on TV has two mommies, some other kid watching is going to ask, ‘why?’ ” Cram said. “That could bring up difficult questions, and maybe it’s not the job of television to address them.
“My theory is that TV does have that responsibility now because people are spending less time with their kids than ever before, and so TV has become a huge part of a lot of children’s lives.”
It’s a personal issue to Cram, whose upbringing could warrant its own play.
At 13, the Manhattan-born Cram became the youngest model ever signed by the famed Wilhelmina agency (which signed Brooke Shields at 16). Cram, whose first name is Incan for “happy,” spent her teen years playing Cassie Reynolds Callison on the soap “One Life to Life.”
“My time as a model and on a soap opera happened to me but, oddly enough, it didn’t lead me away from myself,” she said. “It opened up another world to me, but I’m sort of shy, and so it was very strange for me. I loved performing, but I didn’t want to be famous.”
She was also the daughter of a primarily single mom who was married for a time to author Norman Mailer.
“TV has played a huge part of my life, for better or worse,” she said. “So I realize the power of television in a very hands-on way. But there are so few single parents on TV. My life was not represented until ‘One Day at a Time’ came along.”
Cram’s guiding principle as a writer has been to make sure kids from untraditional backgrounds are fairly represented in the media.
“People are having families in all sorts of different ways now, and that’s just the way it’s going to be from now on,” she said. “So how can we make those kids feel like they are a part of American culture?”
One company that supports her cause is the Colorado-based Gill Foundation. After its first season, “Postcards from Buster” lost nearly all of its $5 million in government funding. It survived for a second season only after Gill (which pitched in $100,000) and other gay-rights groups rallied to help replace the funding, Cram said. The foundation’s Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado is also a season sponsor for the Denver Center Theatre Company.
“The Gill Foundation is a remarkable organization that supports so much around this country to make the lives of everyone better,” said Denver Center artistic director Kent Thompson, also the director of “Dusty.” “We’re very happy that they supported the continued production of ‘Postcards from Buster’ — precisely because that program shares the lives of people of all kinds, orientations, beliefs, cultures, and races with children.”
Gay and Lesbian Fund for Colorado director Mary Lou Makepeace emphasizes that the fund is not agenda-driven, and that it signed on to sponsor the entire Denver Center season before knowing what titles would be on it.
“We like the idea that the arts can educate us, stimulate us and make us think about all kinds of issues in ways we haven’t thought about before,” said Makepeace. “We believe in a very open society where dialogue takes place. That’s how we learn, and that’s how we change.”
Cram thinks things already have changed since 2005 and will change more under President Barack Obama, in whom she sees parts of herself.
“One of the astounding things I feel about our new president is that he’s the son of a single mom, and he comes from such a complicated, non-nuclear family,” she said. “I find that very inspiring. We need more examples of that in the world, whether mixed race or adoptive.
“What a family means has completely changed, and that has to be represented in the media.”
John Moore: 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com
“Dusty and the Big Bad World”
Comedy. Denver Center Theatre Company, Space Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex. Directed by Kent Thompson. Starring Kelly McAndrew, Jeanine Serralles, Charlotte Booker, Sam Gregory and Chloe Nosan. Through Feb. 28. 6:30 p.m. Mondays-Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. Fridays; 1:30 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays. $25-$51. 303-893-4100 (800-641-1222 outside Denver), all King Soopers or . Recommended for ages 13 and older.
Visit Dusty’s very own (parody) website
Hey kids: The official “Dusty and the Big Bad World” website is now live! It’s a special project by the Denver Center’s Charlie Miller. Find out all sorts of interesting things about television’s favorite (fictional) magic dust ball, Dusty. Billed as “the ultimate stop for fans of the most popular kids show on TV.” And yes, it’s all in fun. .
This weekend’s theater openings
“Inana” On the eve of the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, an Iraqi museum director desperately plots to safeguard an ancient statue from the looting he fears will come. He flees to London with his young bride, but before he can begin a new life there, he must reveal his own past and the fate of the statue of Inana, Goddess of War. A Denver Center Theatre Company commission and world premiere presentation by Michele Lowe. Through Feb. 28. Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets, 303-893-4100 or
“The Full Monty” Fun musical based on the popular British film. Five unemployed steelworkers (moved here to Buffalo, N.Y.,) come up with a bold way to make some quick cash: by taking off their clothes. In the process they find renewed self-esteem, the importance of friendship and the ability to have fun. Through Feb. 15. Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, 30 W. Dale St., 719-634-5583 or
Compiled by John Moore
Complete theater listings
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This week’s video podcast
Running Lines at . . . The final “Starship Troy.” This week, Denver Post theater critic John Moore reports from Buntport Theater’s final performance of its biweekly serial. Buntport retired the format on New Year’s Eve, its 100th combined performance of “Starship Troy” and its predecessor, “Magnets on the Fridge.” Our report features excerpts from the final episode, starring Erin Rollman, Hannah Duggan, Brian Colonna, Evan Weissman and Erik Edborg. Run time: 7 minutes. Watch at
