Spongebob Squarepants

• Genre: Children's TV/Movies
• Hometown: Bikini Bottom, Pacific Ocean
• Spongebob Squarepants Website

About

Though a cartoon about a deep-sea dwelling sea sponge and his motley group of Nickelodeon cohorts doesn't seem to exactly have, well, an agenda, don't waste your breath trying to convince the right-wing Christian group Focus on the Family of that. The group took on the square-breeched cartoon character after the We Are Family Foundation (WAFF) sent some elementary schools a cartoon video that showed SpongeBob (and other sundry characters like Winnie the Pooh and Bob the Builder) singing about tolerance and diversity. Sniffing out a buried homosexual agenda -- perhaps because SpongeBob occasionally holds hands with his starfish friend Patrick -- Focus on the Family launched a campaign to halt the dissemination of the videos. While the campaign doesn't seem to have made a dent in the show's popularity, it may have sparked a rash of hand-holding incidents between young children and starfish.

- Sarah Bardeen