Creep of the Week: Kirk Cameron

When I was an adolescent, obsessed with the New Kids On The Block and poring over teen magazines, I saw a lot of Kirk Cameron, star of the TV series “Growing Pains.” Curly-haired and baby-faced, he was the king of magazines like 16 and Tiger Beat in the late ’80s.

I collected those magazines, read them page to page, handled them like they were the Dead Sea Scrolls. Call it a desperate attempt at self-imposed heterosexuality, which I never achieved. Also the start of my budding obsessive-compulsive disorder.

In the decades since, Cameron has devolved from America’s teen crush to a right-wing lunatic. And now he wants to indoctrinate kids with right-wing propaganda.

“For the last couple years I’ve been reading wholesome Christian children’s books at public libraries contra the drag queen story hour and hearing from parents they don’t want woke indoctrination for their kids,” Cameron said in a video posted by Right Wing Watch. “They don’t want gay dinosaurs and trans ducks teaching their children morality.”

I have to admit that I’m not well-versed in my children’s shows these days, but this is apparently a reference to the show “Dino Ranch,” though I don’t know of the trans duck of which he speaks.

“They want kids books and TV shows that are going to reinforce the stuff that parents are trying to teach their kids at home about the sanctity of life, about forgiveness, about family, about the dangers of socialism, and learning to embrace the identity that God gave you,” Cameron continues. “And so what we want to bring to families is what we’re considering a modernized version of ‘Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.’”

The audacity. As if Cameron could ever fill the Mister Rogers-shaped hole in our hearts.

The show, called “Adventures of Iggy and Mr. Kirk,” stars Cameron with Iggy, the evangelical iguana. Are there iguanas in the Bible? I don’t know. TL;DR.

Cameron claims there is great demand for such a program.

He tells Fox News, “Parents are asking us for it. They’re saying things like, ‘Where’s Mister Rogers? We want a show with wholesome, moral values.’ If you watch many of Hollywood’s kids’ shows, you would think that parents want woke instructions for their kids.”

What are “woke instructions,” I wonder? That empathy is not weakness? That racism is bad and definitely still exists? That love is love? That the toxic masculinity-fueled misogyny so celebrated by this country puts women in actual danger, unlike a transgender person who just needs to pee at Target?

The whole concept of “woke” has been co-opted by the radical right, who have turned it into a rallying cry for people who believe that a man marrying a man is disgusting and/or against God, that public schools are performing complete gender affirmation surgeries on kids, that unhoused people are just lazy and that police aren’t violent ENOUGH against Black and brown people

“That’s why I’m so excited about our show,” Cameron told Fox News. “Because it gets to the heart of the kinds of values parents are trying to teach their kids at home and this show is going to reinforce those values while keeping the ‘wow’ factor of the entertainment.”

Keep in mind, before “woke” became the right-wing’s favorite slur, “woke” just meant being aware of the oppression and marginalization of minority groups. It meant acknowledging that there are systemic justices in our society that cannot be fixed just by ignoring them. But that makes conservatives sad — conservatives who for three presidential elections now have run on a platform of “fuck your feelings.”

Cameron called Trump’s election a referendum on wokeness.

The four years of Joe Biden’s presidency “brought to attention where we go when we abandon good, wholesome, American constitutional values,” he said. “And this has served as a wake-up call for parents, and families all over the nation who not only voted, but they’re also looking for an opportunity to lean into a solution and actually participate by training their kids, and raising them up in the way they should go.”It can never be sad enough that Trump is a rapist, a racist, a liar, a misogynist, a serial philanderer and a buffoon. His election teaches our kids that if you’re famous, you can do anything. If you’re rich, there are no consequences. You know, those “good, wholesome, American constitutional values.”