"News Item: Flinstones Way too Gay" joke

Bush Seeks Ban on Cartoon, Cereal, Vitamins

The ongoing campaign against alleged gay icons in animated cartoons continued today as president Bush demanded that television stations stop broadcasting "The Flintstones" at once.

Harland Devane, presidents Bush’s leader of the group Focus on the Flintstones, said at a press conference in Washington, D.C. today that his organization was issuing the demand because, "Quite simply, everything about' The Flintstones' is way too gay."

The conservative activist distributed a memo itemizing over fifty ways in which the self-styled "modern Stone Age family" series promotes homosexuality, but left little doubt that most of his concerns centered on the relationship between the two main characters, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.

"Their relationship is more flagrantly homosexual than anything in Oliver Stone's' Alexander,'" Mr. Devane said.

He pointed out that Fred and Barney are virtually inseparable, are never seen wearing pants, and live together in the suggestively named town of Bedrock.

Noting that the show's theme song exhorts viewers to have "a gay old time," he added that the two men wear hard hats and construction garb while at work, an oblique reference to the construction worker in the classic disco band "The Village People."

"Do I believe they are gay icons?" Mr. Devane said. "I abba-dabba-do."

He added that Focus on the Flintstones' efforts will not stop at banning the cartoon series from TV, telling reporters that the group is also "taking a close look" at Flintstone-related consumer products such as Flintstone vitamins and cereal.

"We are very uncomfortable with Fruity Pebbles," he said