Ever since America's public television system was established through the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, it has had to dodge political bullets, nearly always fired by Republicans. Despite the consistent and high-profile presence on PBS over the years of right-leaning pundits such as William Buckley, John McLaughlin, Ben Wattenberg, Fred Barnes, Peggy Noonan, Tony Brown and Morton Kondracke, Republicans have insisted for decades that the network is guilty of a liberal bias. During the early '70s the Nixon administration, reportedly unhappy with public television's voluminous coverage of the Watergate hearings, tried to silence the network by curtailing funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a presidentially appointed oversight body that channels federal dollars into PBS and local stations. Originally conceived as a way to shield PBS stations from political pressure, the CPB under Nixon tried to do the opposite by exerting more control over programming decisions.

During the Republican revolution of the '90s, the attack was more frontal, with House Speaker Newt Gingrich declaring a war on "Sesame Street's" Big Bird and deriding PBS as "this little sandbox for the rich." He proposed to "zero-out" its federal subsidies, dismissing the network's supporters as "a small group of elitists who want to tax all the American people so they get to spend the money." The offensive put PBS on notice, but politically it was a failure. So Republicans adjusted their sights. As Ken Auletta noted in the New Yorker last year, "The American right has stopped trying to get rid of PBS. Now it wants a larger voice in shaping the institution." And it's clearly getting that voice.

Last summer, the CPB (whose senior vice president for TV programming, Michael Pack, enjoys close ties to the Bush White House) announced funding for two new public affairs programs, each hosted by conservative commentators who were already widely expressing their views on mainstream media outlets: Tucker Carlson, formerly of CNN's "Crossfire," and Paul Gigot, editor of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page (a page that in the past has argued for the complete withdrawal of federal funding for PBS). The CPB also announced there would be no funding for the TV newsmagazine "Now," hosted by liberal advocate Bill Moyers, which some Bush-appointed members of the CPB board dislike. According to the New Yorker, during a CPB meeting last winter, "board members attacked Moyers as partisan. One member reportedly screamed, 'You've got to get rid of Moyers!'" Moyers has since left the weekly show, which has also been cut from one hour to 30 minutes.

Yet relations between PBS and Republicans have been surprisingly cordial over the last couple of years. Laura Bush, a former librarian, has spoken warmly about PBS's children's programming and embraced the Ready to Learn initiative, an effort to help prepare kids for school. And against the backdrop of congressional hearings on indecency in commercial broadcasting and bipartisan opposition to further media consolidation, PBS has been able to stake out a unique, and largely welcomed, territory in the eyes of Congress. PBS has also worked at ingratiating itself with Republicans. It tapped Gingrich as its keynote speaker in 2003, when PBS station managers made their annual pilgrimage to Washington to schmooze with politicians and ask for funding. That's one reason why Spellings' full-throated attack on a cartoon bunny caught so many people off-guard.

"Postcards From Buster" is a spinoff of the award-winning animated children's program "Arthur." In each episode Buster, a high-strung bunny, visits real-life families in towns around the country -- such as Park City, Utah, and Whitesburgh, Ky. -- to learn about local customs and different cultures. During Buster's trip to Vermont, he learns about milking cows and making maple sugar while briefly meeting two families headed by gay parents. The Education Department contributed $23 million to the Ready to Learn program, and $5 million of that went to "Postcards From Buster," which targets 6-to-8-year-olds. Officials at the Education Department knew ahead of time that the pair of lesbian moms appeared in one episode because WGBH, upon request, sent over a rough cut of the series in early January. "It's not common, but we work cooperatively with them," says Jeanne Hopkins, a spokeswoman for WGBH.

On Jan. 21, PBS announced that its broadcast of the "Sugartime!" episode would be postponed until March 23 so stations around the country could preview it. Some outlets, such as Alabama Public Television, immediately balked on airing it. APTV spokesman Mike McKenzie said that introducing the issue of gay marriage, even indirectly, "would violate the trusted relationship between parents and the stations."

But on Jan. 25 PBS reversed course and opted to not distribute the episode nationally, a rare move. (Stations that choose to air the show will get it from WGBH.) Then, a few hours later, came Spellings' attack. "It's sort of frightening that on her second day in office the secretary of education finds a half-hour children's program to complain about," Charren says.

Wilson, the PBS programming executive, says the show was yanked because it failed, adding that it failed, ironically, because the gay mothers played too small a role in the episode. "If the goal was to explore alternative family structures, we would have done it thoroughly and thoughtfully. Instead, the episode opened the door to a sensitive issue and then didn't fully explore it, [which] then lets parents down." Of course, if Spellings found a pair of lesbian mothers in the background objectionable enough to demand a refund, who knows how far she would have gone if PBS had produced a full-fledged exploration of gay parents in its children's programming.

It's possible the lobbyists are right, and that yanking "Sugartime!" off most PBS stations will help preserve the network's working relationship with those who have the power to cut funding, or hold hearings on the network's "bias," as has occurred in recent years. But Charren wonders at what price. "I don't think you can afford to have a relationship like this," she warns. "It doesn't help PBS at all to have the public think that whenever the White House snaps its fingers, PBS jumps. People don't give money to PBS in order to have the White House tell it what to do."

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