In Defense of SpongeBob SquarePants

Today, as the attention of my home country turns to the second inaugural of George W. Bush as President, I am thinking about another distinguished American, Mr. SpongeBob SquarePants, now officially a political target of the Christian Right.

No, I am not making this up. You see, some high profile Christian leaders in the US have accused Mr. SpongeBob of being gay. Here’s the link to today’s article in the NY Times. Granted his head is oddly square, his smile oddly large, his arms and legs ridiculously scrawny for his body. But he is, after all, a cartoon character. Perhaps these are secretly homosexual traits in a sponge. Could be – I never studied the literature on gay sponges that closely.

I have a two-year-old daughter and even though we do not own a television set (more on that battle another day) SpongeBob is one of the few cartoon characters she recognizes immediately. As I type this, I have on the desk beside me a SpongeBob SquarePants. It’s a Bolivian model, quite cool really – handmade, cost a dollar, and if you press his necktie (Hey, do gay guys wear neckties?) it ignites a rousing rendition of the theme from the Titanic. This was my reason for buying it actually, a “two-fer” that appealed to both my daughters, the one that’s two and the one that’s eighteen.

To paraphrase Richard Nixon (who famously said this a half century ago about an illicitly received puppy named Checkers), “I don’t care what they say, I am not giving back my SpongeBob SquarePants.

So, on this day of George Bush the younger seizing another for years at the national reins, there is hope. Never, ever underestimate the capacity of some people to become so convinced of their own righteousness that they just get, well, sort of looney. In the meantime let’s all rally to the defense of the little yellow sponge with brown pants and prepare to watch the political show as those who fear him just start looking sillier and sillier.

Que viva el SpongeBob! Que viva!