The reboot of the hit 1990s Nickelodeon children’s show, “Blues Clues,” has pushed LGBTQ messaging with a special song.
According to Deadline, the “Blues Clues & You” alphabet song “ABC Song with Blue!” featured the famous dog singing about different letters of the alphabet; the letter “P” stood for pride and was colored by the rainbow.
“The ABC Song with Blue!, sung by the dog Blue as voiced by Traci Paige Johnson, assigns concepts to letters of the alphabet. At ‘P,’ the song notes, ‘P is full of Pride.’ To underline its point, the ‘P’ is in rainbow colors, the same as the colors of the LGBTQ pride flag,” the outlet reported. “The letter is also surrounded by multiple other flags representing specific communities. Those include flags for the Trans community, asexual community, pansexual community, intersex community, gender-fluid community, and more.”
The song is associated with the show’s YouTube channel and has not aired on television.
Nickelodeon has been an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ pride, with Nick Jr. celebrating Pride Month on its Instagram page last year.
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As The Daily Wire reported in December 2020, Nickelodeon also rolled out the “Trans Youth Acting Challenge” with trans actor Michael D. Cohen to encourage trans youth into seeking an acting career.
“I’ve been getting a lot of DMs and emails from trans kids around the world who, like me when I was a kid, had dreams of becoming an actor,” Cohen said of the program. “So I went to Nickelodeon and said I really want to help make it possible for these kids to realize their dreams. So together we are partnering to create the ‘Michael D. Cohen Trans Youth Acting Challenge.’”
“The ‘Michael D. Cohen Trans Youth Acting Challenge’ is open to any transgender and/or non-binary youth who love acting,” Cohen continued. “Whatever talents your child has, we want to see them. And we need you to help them put together their audition tape. We’re going to pick 12 submissions and they will be invited to participate in a very special Zoom acting master class with me.”
LGBTQ representation in children’s shows has been on the uptick this past decade, beginning in 2014 on the Disney show “Good Luck Charlie,” which featured a lesbian mom couple.
“In the storyline, parents Amy and Bob Duncan (Leigh-Allyn Baker and Eric Allan Kramer) set up a playdate for preschooler Charlie (Mia Talerico) and one of her new friends,” TV Guide reported at the time. “When the kid arrives, the Duncans learn that Charlie’s pal has two moms. That’s fine, but the potential new friendship is put to the test as one mom chats with Amy, and the other is stuck listening to Bob’s dull stories.”
In 2019, the PBS television show “Arthur” made waves when a beloved character came out as gay by marrying his male partner. That was later followed by the Disney show “Andi Mack” featuring the first teenage gay couple on the network, which was then followed by the “Rocko’s Modern Life” reboot featuring a transgender storyline.
In 2020, an episode of “Clifford the Big Red Dog” also featured a lesbian couple.