Is Nickelodeon Featuring a Drag Queen for Pride Month?

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Viral social media posts claim Nickelodeon shared videos of a drag queen:

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  1. Avatar photo
    Dustin Anglin

    I feel like my youth was filled with examples of media with males characters dressing in drag for humorous effect, but I'll also admit that I don't know much about "drag culture" to say whether it's inherently "for adults only" or not. That said, I also remember be introduced many "adults only" comedians and stars in media aimed at kids in my youth, so I don't think a drag queen being featured on Nickelodeon is that much different than George Carlin starring in Shining Time Station.

    Seems like as long as the content being programmed is appropriate for the age group it is be programmed for, it doesn't really matter who's doing it. And considering drag getup itself is not inherently sexual (not like, say, BDSM getup or even explicitly revealing clothing) then I think most kids will just see it as vibrantly dressed person who looks kind of like a clown. I don't see how that necessarily invites any more or less conversation than a parent chooses to have with their kids, in the same way my niece picking a rainbow flag for the pirate ship we piloted in a video game didn't force me to explain to her that it was an LGBTQ+ flag, and not just a pretty rainbow flag.

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    Joel Stewart

    This seems like maybe not a good thing.

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    Dana Goldstein

    https://www.out.com/drag/2019/4/30/how-nina-west-channeled-her-republican-childhood-queer-activism

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    Matt J

    I'd say the real reason conservatives are losing the culture war is they allow themselves to get distracted like this. A few months back, when a school board tried to scrub Lincoln's name from a high school for his 'controversial past', conservatives should've been able to nail them to the wall and score a major victory. Instead, the story reached about the same prominence in conservative media as Drag Queen Story Hour. You guys need to pick your battles.
    And, I don't know, make your own kids network where Rand Paul reads Atlas Shrugged or something. You guys aren't even on the playing field right now.

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      DougCLE

      The real reason the Right is losing the culture war? It's the same as it's been for half a century now - the Left controls the film and TV industry. Like, why is this even up for dispute?

      Who are the heroes in today's movies? Who are the villains? What people, cultures, lifestyles, and worldviews are celebrated on the big and small screens, and which are reviled? Name for me the number of movies or shows in the last 50 years where a conservative Baptist minister (or conservative suit-and-tie businessman, or right-wing politician, etc.) is even a decent guy, much less the hero? How many where he is the explicit villain, or at best, well-meaning but foolish and ultimately proven wrong?

      I'm not even complaining about this; I'm just stating a simple fact. But that fact matters, because stories determine how we view the world. Oh, we tell ourselves that we know the difference between fiction and reality, but the human brain isn't wired like that. If you hear the same story enough times, it becomes true for you, even if you know it's fiction.

      I don't mean the main story - you're not going to start thinking there really is an ambiguously gay Snow Queen somewhere who sings trite songs about Being Yourself in a carefully autotuned voice - but rather that you'll come to believe that the story's archetypes (good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, wisdom and foolishness, etc.) are true reflections of real life, rather than being shallow copies that mostly just reflect the worldview of the writer(s). When the same foundational assumptions are used in every story you see, they become *your* assumptions as well, even when you *know* the stories themselves are just made-up BS for entertainment. It has nothing to do with how intelligent you are; it's just how our brains work.

      Obviously, this works the same for both sides of the political spectrum. It's what made Trump's "Stop The Steal" so compelling, without a shred of actual evidence, because "everyone knows" the Dems *would* steal the election, even if we didn't catch them this time. It's what makes someone like Tucker Carlson so powerful - it doesn't matter if you believe him that the Left really *did* the evil thing he's accusing them of; listen to him long enough and you'll start to believe they *could*.

      So, yeah, it absolutely happens on the Right, as well. But the Right's holdings in popular media are comparatively limited, and the Left's... aren't. Hence, victory.

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        Matt J

        The solution is the free market. If conservatives think that the left dominates Hollywood, which yeah, it kinda does, they have an obligation to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make movies promoting conservative values. Those "God's Not Dead" movies made money, so I know it's possible. If the movies are good, people will come watch them. The market isn't just open, it's gaping. They need only seize it.

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          DougCLE

          That's kind of like saying, "If you don't like selling your handmade tea cozies under Amazon's terms of service, go start your own multi-billion dollar sales empire with 180 worldwide shipping hubs and a fleet of 30,000 dedicated trucks." Do I absolutely believe in the free market? Heck yeah, I do. Do I think you'd have a chance in hell of success? No, no I do not.

          A better plan, if cultural conservatives really want to turn the tide of the culture wars, would be to take over the existing structure that is Hollywood itself. It could be done with enough will and money, I think. And wouldn't that be a laugh on the Hollywood types who've spent the last 6 decades shrieking about the imminent right-wing fundamentalist dystopia while gleefully tearing down every single moral boundary that stood in their way?

          In any case, I was not attempting to provide cultural conservatives with a means to win the culture wars, only to explain the actual reason why they're currently losing.

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          1. Ingenero.lux

            I’d say it would take something simpler but harder - good artists who are conservative. I’m not saying conservatives don’t appreciate art, but I’ve seen far more conservatives go into the arts to make the arts conservative than good artists who love art and are conservative. The latter simply doesn’t do much except make a niche for bad artists to sell their junk to conservatives who want “conservative” art. Sure, the left doesn’t have to play by these rules - there are certainly terrible artists who make a living because of leftist political sentiment. I’ve been to art museums, these people exist and their work sucks. There are also plenty of excellent liberal artists, but my point is that an outspoken conservative in art circles has to be good at what they do or risk ostracism. Even a hint of conservatism often unleashes the Twitteratti. That makes it harder to grow a conventional career, has made many conservatives dismiss the arts as leftist, and in turn made it less likely that budding young artists who are conservative enter the arts - apart from people driven to make “conservative” art, most of whom will, in my experience, be hacks. The same generally applies to academia - entering that world is simply less attractive to young conservatives when they assume it’s a liberal bastion, so most of the talented ones go another direction while a goodly percentage of those who try are, again, hacks who want to be a conservative academic, not a good academic who’s conservative.

            I don’t think any of this is inevitable - I’ve read some of the psychologizing about how artists (or people in other pursuits) will tend left or right and have found it to be far more of a “just so” story than anything convincing - but I do think conservatives should tone down the rhetoric around this. If we stop ostracizing certain career paths we might both encourage talented young conservatives to pursue those careers because of talent, rather than trying to turn the career “conservative”, and also attract people in those careers who may have conservative sentiments but not like how they’re treated.

            Of course, easier said than done, but there’s no reason things should be this lopsided politically.

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            Matt J

            It wouldn't be that lopsided, not by half. It's a business venture. All you'd have to do is take some nice Cali property, get a group of investors, and start building. Silicon Valley, often considered a liberal bastion, was built from the ground up in a few decades, and they made waves. If enough high-level conservatives got together, I think they'd be able to find the capital to start.

            Your method could work too. What's important either way is that they find enough filmmakers who can consistently turn profits better than current Hollywood elites - as some tell it, that wouldn't be difficult. The game isn't rigged, one side just picked a winning strategy. Conservatives still have the oil, so that's nice.

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        2. Shaybult

          I started to write a reply to Doug, then saw yours and abandoned my effort - you stated it much better.

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      CVS

      You've got this bass-ackwards.

      It's easy to teach people about how great Abraham Lincoln was, hell, just watch the Speilberg movie.

      It's a lot harder to teach brainwashed *children* that there aren't 873422 genders and your feelings don't negate your biological reality.

      BTW, David French is right that we shouldn't ban, as a matter of law, Drag Queen Story Hour. That decidedly does *not* mean we should ignore people who want to make puberty blockers available to confused children.

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        Matt J

        That's another reason the right is losing the culture war. The left thinks the right is all backwards old fogies, and the right thinks that the left is full of mental defectives. You can see how there's not a lot of common ground between these two positions.

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          CVS

          So, your case is that people's feelings *can* negate biological reality?

          I disagree.

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            Matt J

            My case is that it is, as the French say, none of my beeswax what gender anyone other than myself is. If your daughter was your son or vice versa, would you love them any less? If your father was your mother and your mother was your father, would you love either of them any less?

            I do understand the hubbub, don't think that I don't. It's very hard, perhaps impossible, to put yourself in the shoes of someone with gender dysphoria. At the end of the day, though, it comes down to a binary choice: Do you respect transgender individuals, or disrespect them? That may sound reductionist, but you seem to think I believe that you can will your Y chromosomes into becoming X chromosomes through faith alone, so now we are equally simplified.

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    David Chen

    Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I would just let kids start a Slaanesh army in Warhammer 40k.

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      Dave T

      Sounds like someone needs some Greater Good.

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      Matt Price

      Yes, Mr. Inquisitor, right over here.

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    3. Ingenero.lux

      And make them degenerate? Khorne all the way! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!

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        David Chen

        If they are going to learn about human sexuality from inappropriate places, I might as well pick one that I'd be able to make conversation in.

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          🤣 And at least this way they’d be getting lessons in math and summoning demons from the primordial Chaos. Useful skills!

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            David Chen

            Who knows, they might even come to appreciate mainline religions after learning about ones that flay the followers for fun.

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    4. David Mancke

      Magic

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    Dave T

    Mr. Walsh appears to have confused knowing "why" conservatives are losing the culture with knowing "that" conservatives are doing so. Yes, this definitely indicates a conservative-averse cultural shift. But it doesn't say anything about why.

    And given the patent nonsense of his statement "bring back shame", in an era when raging online mobs can destroy someone's life in a moment, I am not confident that he can tell us why.

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      Aylene Wright

      Unfortunately Matt Walsh has become little more than a Twitter troll whose M.O. is to Tweet provocative comments about the Culture War. Not just about sex, but race as well.

      Last year he could be seen defending the Lost Cause mythos of Robert E. Lee as a patriot fighting to defend his homeland, that the Civil War wasn't really about slavery, etc.

      Also recall him using the Tony Timpa case (a white man killed by cops in a very similar manner to George Floyd) as a whataboutist attack on BLM / defense of Derek Chauvin and being rightly called out by Andrew for it with "This is the first time Matt Walsh has mentioned Tony Timpa's name", he then proceeded to meticulously dissect the cynical game Walsh was playing.

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    Dpatricola

    These people are free to not watch Nickelodeon. But they need to keep fueling their causes and highlight things they personally don't agree with when they are not compelled by laws or customs to partake in. It's a solution looking for a problem.

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    1. Ryan

      Yes this hunt for something to be outraged about gets very boring and tedious. While I might not love what Nickelodeon is doing, one can simply change the channel. Or better yet! Redirect the passion they feel about this into producing high quality children's programming that aligns with their values!

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        Aylene Wright

        So sad that the Right managed to create a robust alternative media ecosystem for RW *politics* but not RW "culture". About the only example of QUALITY Christian themed children's programming that I can think of is VeggieTales, that actually had a lot of crossover appeal into secular culture as well. Although I do recall some Christian critics claimed that Vischer basically sold out and de-Christianized the series to make it more palatable to secular syndicators.

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          Aylene Wright

          I should also mention the hilarious 1-2-3 Penguins, a riff on Star Trek, also by Big Idea. But that one certainly didn't strike me as propagating specifically "Christian" or "conservative" themes. But still a rare example these days of clean programming that's also appealing to adults.

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          1. Acre00

            There's also Little Dogs on the Prairie, which I believe was by the same guy that did Veggie tales after he sold Big Idea

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  8. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    I don’t see the issue. My kids don’t even know what Nickelodeon is. I watched it growing up because we had to watch whatever was on at the time we were watching - or do something else.

    Now, you have a million options whenever you want. It’s easy to avoid drag queens, gender lectures, woke holidays, whatever. In fact, my four year old hasn’t seen much kids tv created since around 1987.

    If you want your kids to watch all that stuff, why should I care? Matt Walsh isn’t conservative. He’s no different than the wokesters themselves because he’s far too worried about what other people’s kids are doing.

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      Resident Borderline Zoomer

      You kids may not, but millions of others’ do. What people should do to police kids’ entertainment, what is bad enough to be protested or even banned, is not the same question as whether people should feel they need to approve of any particular kids’ show. You can think Nickelodeon exposing young children to drag is terrible — and the parents who approve of it wrong — while also believing it’s not your job to try to get such material banned.

      If you want your kids to watch shows hosted by drag queens, why should I care? Well, because I care about kids’ welfare. If I think a show like that is not remotely age-appropriate, which I do, what exactly is wrong with my saying so? I have no obligation to approve of how other people raise their children, and this fact is fairly obvious to anyone in more extreme cases. Surely there are parenting styles you think are damaging to children, and some abusive practices you even think should be illegal.

      Saying it’s not your business what others do can be a way of avoiding the issue at hand. Even if it’s not your business, you have every right to voice your opinion on it.

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        The Bell Tower

        Of course you can voice your opinion. I don’t know where you think I’ve said otherwise.

        And I’m not avoiding any issue. I won’t subject my kids to that dreck but if I think I can tell other parents they shouldn’t expose their kids to it, why can’t they force me to expose mine?

        Then it just becomes a contest of wills between jerks telling each other what they should and shouldn’t be doing.

        The whole point of the American experiment was to minimize the spaces where jerks can boss me around. I like to give back, as it were, by not trying to boss them around.

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    DougCLE

    Hmmm.... I no longer have a dog in the Children's TV fight, but if I did, I could wish they would not do this.

    Full disclosure: I love Drag Shows - the campiness and faux-glamor, the ribald jokes and double-entendres - and one day I will gladly take my adult children to see them, should they be so inclined. I would not wish to have to explain drag to my 10-year-old. (It'd likely go over the head of a 5-year-old, but a 10-year-old is going to have questions.)

    The problem here is that Drag Queens are explicitly sexual in nature, so explaining drag necessarily means explaining a much wider range of human sexual behavior than I want to delve into with my pre-teen. And before you say that's "phobic", please understand that I would have no wish to explain a female burlesque dancer to my 10-year-old, either. ("Well, you see, honey, when a mommy and a bunch of drunken sailors in Vegas on leave Love Each Other Very Much, the mommy puts on a silver bikini with giant feathers, and a pair of stiletto heels, and...)

    As a parent, I desire the right to expose my kids to sexuality in the manner (and at a rate) that *I* choose. You might choose differently, and more power to you, but Nickelodeon just made the choice for all of us. If my kids still watched Nick, I'd probably lead the boycott.

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      Bill B

      Never had these monitoring problems with Bugs, Moose and Squirrel, Boris and Natasha and the Roadrunner... not to mention Yogi Bear. Glad my kids are grown and I don't have to navigate that landscape. But then I look at what's on primetime and cable and it's cultural agitprop and defining deviancy down all the way. Gosh, is "deviancy" even a word anymore or is it just the "D" word?

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    2. David Mancke

      Ribald! Excellent choice

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    3. Ingenero.lux

      I’d say this is worse: https://youtu.be/d4vHegf3WPU

      I would not want to explain this to my kids. Especially not my “Blue’s Clues” aged kids. I’m very much a live-and-let-live person, but I don’t want to explain to my four year old what Asexual, Bisexual, and Pansexual mean. I haven’t explained what “sexual” even means, for crying out loud, let alone hetero and homosexuality, what Queer means, or any of the myriad of other things that my kids would ask about but probably don’t need to know when they still think poop is the height of humor. I’m about as far from freaking out about “Drag Queen Story Hour” as one can get as a (religious) conservative, but this just seems like a really bad idea - even beyond my beliefs, I can’t see bringing such things up as doing anything healthy for kids. “Heather Has Two Mommies” isn’t my bag, but it’s about a family, not what Heather’s mommies do in bed. Without getting into polygyny (a whole other can of worms with its own set of massive issues), there’s no way I can see to discuss “Ace, Bi, and Pan” or “Queer” other than an age-inappropriate discussion.

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        David Chen

        I can sort of see the argument that even if a kid doesn't understand sexuality, conditioning them not think its weird that their classmate has two mommies or whatever has some merit. But that just means putting a gay couple in the show and not making a deal about it. Making a big deal about gay pride will inevitably bring up sexuality and that's just not a conversation that kids shows should prompt. But what any of this has to do with drag queens is beyond me.

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          Ultimately, solely that Nickelodeon decided the right spokesperson for Pride Month was a drag queen. They could easily have chosen someone less flashily unusual (Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Paige are less flashily unusual, as are most gay and lesbian individuals and couples - think Ellen DeGeneris or Neil Patrick Harris) and likely get a lot less pushback. It’s like someone wanted to generate controversy.

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            David Chen

            The PETA mindset of 'any attention is good attention' is like a cancer.

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        DougCLE

        Yeesh, that is worse. And as MS pointed out, the target audience isn’t going to get it, so what’s the point? To score some woke points with lefty parents? To “own the cons”?

        It seems like there’s more of this in-your-face cultural BS every day. It’s puerile, and contributes nothing worthwhile to the conversation, and it almost makes me think maybe Trump guys have a point, that live-and-let-live really *isn’t* enough for the left.

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          Mudskipper

          I'm more inclined to believe it's genuine blindness due to being in a pretty opaque bubble.

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            DougCLE

            Hanlon's Razor. Good point. I need to work harder to keep that in mind - we'd all get along better if we stopped assuming every goof-up is really a deliberate attempt to p*** us off.

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        Mudskipper

        Are Blue's Clues aged kids preschoolers? If so, almost all of this is going to sail right over their heads. I would guess that they wouldn't even understand enough of the lyrics even to ask questions.

        But given that preschoolers wouldn't understand it, I have to wonder what the point of it is, besides scoring some sort virtue signalling points with lefty adults. It seems like a rather ridiculous, pot-stirring exercise, designed to poke at cultural tender points. Stupid.

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        1. Ingenero.lux

          Definitely targeted at pre-schoolers. And also definitely largely stupid virtue signaling. Except, I have preschoolers and a song-and-animation number like this will raise a metic heckton of questions I won’t be able to answer and be a responsible parent. Not “religious conservative” parent, a parent who doesn’t take parenting strategies from “Brave New World”. The main Pride video doesn’t bother me the same way - it’s not going to be on my kids’ playlists this side of ever, and I second DougCLE’s point about not wanting to have to explain drag shows to children wondering who the heck the person in the song is, but glossing over that would be simple compared to a preschooler singing a modified version of “The ants go marching one by one” and wanting to know what Ace, Bi, and Poly means.

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            Mudskipper

            You can't say: "Well, sweetie, Bi means...Look a squirrel!!"

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      Eric

      I don’t have kids. But, I was a child. And I think kids are smarter than we think. I remember being exposed to a lot of sexualized media (whether I should have been is another question). I don’t think this is a big deal. Drag is sexual in nature. But I can’t imagine Nickelodeon is turning up the drag to 11. This is no worse than the old Bugs Bunny cartoons where he cross dresses or Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Additionally, parents should be monitoring their child’s television. If parents don’t want their kid to watch, turn it off. If the kids have any questions, it’s literally the parents job to figure out how to explain that. I’d be concerned if drag queens were teaching Sex Ed in school or something. But this is a nothingburger in my opinion.

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        DougCLE

        I, uh, don't think the Bugs Bunny skits are quiiiite the same thing as a drag queen. BB was supposed to be taken as a human woman by the men he was tricking. And of course, it was played for laughs, like a bearded Seabee in a war movie wearing coconut shells and a hula skirt for a USO show. Drag queens are specifically meant to be taken as men dressed as women for at least partly sexual reasons. That's just who they are. As I said, I'm a big fan personally, but I'm 50 years old.

        And I've always hated the "parents should monitor" thing. I did monitor what my kids watched; most parents do. But I should be able to put on a frikkin' *children's* TV station and go clean the kitchen while my 8-year-old watches Sponge Bob and eats lunch, without coming back to find him staring at a burlesque star singing a song about sexual Pride.

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      Aylene Wright

      I saw one Drag Queen show in college and must confess I really didn't get their appeal. I suppose the question here is whether Drag Queens are inherently sexualized "adult entertainment" or not.

      At least they did not feature an underage Drag Queen. (I guess that would be a Drag Princess?) I saw a feature of such a performer a couple years ago and found it very disturbing. The parents were taking the child to gay bars to perform, and the patrons were hooting, throwing dollar bills, etc.

      Of course, when I expressed my concerns, I was immediately hit with "but I bet you're perfectly fine with parents entering cis girls into beauty pageants"! Uh, I actually find the "Toddlers and Tiaras" culture to be guilty of the sexualization of minors as well.

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        DougCLE

        I have heard tell of the kid DQ, but have not seen him. I'm totally sure he won't have serious issues as an adult from being pimped out by his own parents as a child.

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        Resident Borderline Zoomer

        I don’t see how drag can be seen as non-sexual; like it or don’t, but it’s just not appropriate for children. Drag is men dressing as highly feminized caricatures of women with heavy makeup, etc., and it is closely associated with gay culture. (It should go without saying that a culture based on shared sexuality is likely to be… sexualized.) I agree regarding beauty pageants — they’re no more child-appropriate than is drag.

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    L L Cool A

    Seriously, what is the issue here? Encouraging tolerance and kindness is not the same thing as a recruitment effort.

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      Aylene Wright

      I think the question is, as DougCLE states, are Drag Queens inherently sexualized or not. I am personally not sure. But I do think that makes it different than, say, the Mr. Ratburn wedding episode on Arthur, which I personally had no problem with.

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        L L Cool A

        I watched the video of the song she performs and there is nothing sexual about that. I know drag shows are notoriously bawdy, but I am certain any one of them can perform a clean, upbeat song for Pride Week.

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      2. Peter

        I dont think drags are inherently sexual. It depends what the topic is. A lot of shows for drags are fashion/ entertainment shows which are not appropriate for kids.

        But sone drag queens are entertainers first. Here in my area some drag queens like to do kids story telling. Nothing sexual about it. And they are more entertaining to kids than grumpy grandpa trying to read a story to kids.

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          Aylene Wright

          Oh no, you brought up the dreaded Drag Queen Story Hour! Hope a certain NYPost editorial writer doesn't read this! 😉

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About Alec Dent

Alec Dent is the culture editor and a staff writer for The Dispatch. He is a graduate of the Hussman School of Journalism and Media at UNC Chapel Hill, and previously oversaw The Dispatch's fact checking team.
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