Is Nickelodeon Featuring a Drag Queen for Pride Month?
Yes.
Viral social media posts claim Nickelodeon shared videos of a drag queen:
This claim is correct: The children’s television network created an original song for Pride Month titled “The Meaning of Pride.” The song is performed by drag queen Nina West, the stage name of Andrew Levitt, who rose to fame on the drag television show RuPaul’s Drag Race. The video with Levitt has been shared by Nickelodeon on the company’s YouTube channel, Instagram, and TikTok. Levitt also made an appearance on Blue’s Clues & You to promote Pride Month awareness.
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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.
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.