Media Research Center writer spent a good part of last year raging at public broadcasting for not viciously hating transgender people the way he does. — and that rage unsurprisingly amplified after Donald Trump won the election. He complained in a Nov. 22 post:
The PBS News Hour on Wednesday, having evidently learned nothing from the election results, returned to its long-standing left-wing alphabet obsession, even adding a number (“two-spirit”) in a story about president-elect Donald Trump “rolling back transgender rights.” But this lesson wasn’t at all like the one’s that aired on PBS’s former children’s staple Sesame Street program. So what is “two-spirit”? Read on, if you dare.
PBS again showed no interest in providing a balanced discussion on so-called gender-identity issues.
Waters’ idea of “balance,” of course, is to sneer and spew insults at transgender people — which, of course, is what he did over “two-spirit” people:
Ah yes, “two-spirit,” that renowned traditional gender variant term used since (checks notes)….1990. Since there is no single approved definition for the quasi-Native American phrase, it’s convenient to use for activists who want to use their children as ideological props.
After soundbites from three parents (besides “Two-Spirit,” there was a parent of a “trans child” and the executive director of Trans Lifeline with pronouns he/they) expressing fear regarding the incoming Trump administration’s threats to “gender-affirming care.”
In a Dec. 5 post, Waters insisted that it was “blackmail” to point out how anti-transgender laws harm young transgender people:
Wednesday’s PBS News Hour featured a propagandistic, nine-and-a-half minute segment on the important case argued before the Supreme Court involving a Tennessee law banning transgender surgery for minors: “Supreme Court hears arguments in most significant trans rights case to reach bench.”
The taxpayer-funded network actually opened its broadcast with emotional blackmail, in the guise of a clip from a sympathetic “transgender” child hypothetically endangered by Tennessee’s responsible move to restrict so-called “gender-affirming care” for minors.
[…]From the start, PBS played on fears of suicidal ideation (a false narrative exposed yesterday by Justice Samuel Alito) if impressionable children don’t get to sign on for permanent body modification.
Is that what PBS did? No. Even the study to which Waters appears to be referring (though he weirdly quotes a right-wing Supreme Court justice citing it rather then citing the study itself) states that “It is of utmost importance to identify and appropriately treat mental disorders in adolescents experiencing gender dysphoria to prevent suicide.”
Waters went on to whine further about the report:
The actual segment was no better. Evasive PBS didn’t delve into Eli’s “top surgery” – the act of removing a girl’s breasts ostensibly to make her chest look more “masculine.” Reporter Laura Barron-Lopez, the outlet’s most fervent cheerleader on trans-kid issues, skipped those nauseating details regarding such unnecessary mutilation being performed on minors, leaning on that “top surgery” euphemism.
A misnomer term favored by trans-activists, “gender-affirming care,” cropped up nine times, better translated as “cross-sex hormones, castration, and breast removal.”
And who is Waters citing to claim that “gender-affirming care” is a “misnomer term”? Right-wing writer and activist Tim Carney, hardly an objective voice.
Waters spent a Dec. 23 post in a tirade over a “LGTBQ+ Identity Toolkit,” which he takes great pains to obscure the fact that it came out four years ago and he’s a little late to the game:
Whenever the first Trump administration made noises about defunding public media (in its 2017 and 2018 budget proposals, for instance), including National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the congressionally founded tax-funded entity ostensibly in charge, would respond by emphasizing how PBS benefits kids. This statement from PBS CEO Paula Kerger in February 2020 bragged:
Decades of research confirms that PBS’s premier children’s media service, PBS KIDS, helps children build critical literacy, math and social-emotional skills, enabling them to find success in school and life.
But must PBS’s educational support for children also include transgender and gender-identity propaganda?
PBS has run plenty of stories on its evening broadcast encouraging transgender treatments and surgery and standing for “transgender rights,” not only for adults but even impressionable minors who are not ready to make such irrevocable decisions about their body.
[…]More trans-propaganda aimed at children: WNET, an influential public station which serves New York City and produces much PBS programming, ran a “Teacher’s Voice” piece in October 2020, “Queering Your Classroom with the Understanding LGTBQ+ Identity Toolkit,” written by Natalie Nuzzo, an 8th grade (!) teacher who celebrated that “LGTBQ+” resource:
Waters also served up a tirade over the Trevor Project for also not hating LGBTQ people:
The controversial Trevor Project, which bills itself as “the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people” and aggressively pushes so-called “gender-affirming” surgeries (like “cross-sex hormones, castration, and breast removal”) onto kids, has not only figured heavily in PBS coverage, which regularly promotes its slanted surveys on so-called suicidal ideation among LGBTQ youth. Trevor’s presence has also seeped into its coverage aimed at children themselves.
Waters made no effort to actually disprove anything from the Trevor Project or explain why not hating LGBTQ poople is “controversial” to anyone outside his right-wing bubble.
Waters concluded by summarizing his Dec. 5 post, insisting without evidence that a Supreme Court case demonstrated “the intellectual disintegration of the trans-kids argument under Justice Samuel Alito’s rigorous questioning.”