Today is Sesame Street Day, or so MSN homepage tells me, so I feel like it is an appropriate time for this letter. I've sat back long enough, hoping someone else would say something. As in most things, it seems like it's been left to me to make the world a better place. From what I gather, at the outset, your goal was to create an educational tool that children will enjoy while not at school. Ideally, it was a way that adults could use the electronic babysitter for their children and not worry that they were only being subjected to mindless garbage. If we worked in ideals, Adrianne Palicki and I would be happily married, solving mysteries while riding a fanboat. No, we live in the real world, where her lawyers have repeatedly asked to to stop contacting her, the police keep telling me I have no business at their crimes scenes, and your characters set a terrible example for the children they are supposedly educating.
Let's take Elmo for example. Elmo is a furry little monster that started out as a background character, had several wildly different voices, and then became a breakout star with his high pitched, nasal whine. Basically, he is Fran Drescher. The main difference is, children know to fear Fran Drescher, and they don't learn from her. If you ask Elmo anything, he will undoubtedly refer to himself in the third person. Only three types of people talk in the third person: NFL wide receivers, pimps, and Bob Dole. None of them should be allowed around children.
Cookie Monster is another good one. Since his creation, childhood diabetes has risen over eleven million percent according to some studies that I may or may not have made up. Furthermore, he's the clearest depiction of an addict that some children will ever know. One day, he'll be singing "C is for Cough Syrup" and no one will bat an eyelash, because we've all known it was coming.
The rest of your cast of characters are either blatant stereotypes, blackboards that your producers use to promote whatever agenda they see fit, or simply hellacious monsters burst forth from some nether region to enslave mankind. Bert and Ernie are blatant stereotypes of the downtrodden Armenian coal miner and Snuffalupagus is barely more than a minstrel show caricature of a Greek fisherman. Grover has been used to perpetuate the rape culture of America for decades, and Big Bird is a thinly veiled recreation of the pagan god Aengus, known as the frightful god of spring, who feasts upon cattle fortnightly.
I will not stand to let my children, however fictitious they may be, be sullied by your foul and blasphemous propaganda. If my children need to watch television to learn something, they will be what I did, and learn from Night Court.
Also, this letter had nothing to do with the fact that I threw up in the ball pit at Sesame Place.
Wow. Things must have really changed since I stopped watching. I personally think Gonzo did more to perpetuate rape culture than Grover. And that has nothing to do with the fact that I would totally hang out with Su......per Grover if I met him on the street. In fact, the whole Sesame St. thing went downhill when Grover stopped making appearances.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think we should petition to bring Grover back. He and Snuffalupagus sorta disappeared like Nadezhda Tolokonnikova during a Siberian prison transfer. Maybe they were the only two voices of sanity left on the street and the NWO of Elmo had them silenced.
You've really opened my eyes. With a baby on the way, I need to start thinking about what other lazy ways I can entertain this kid without expending effort or warping him for life. I mean, Elmo's downfall has come. Who knows who stands next in line ready to pick up where Elmo left off with his third person way of speaking to keep people from feeling their individualism?
Sesame Street is well on its way to becoming Animal Farm. Who will be the next Sesame Stalin, looking all shady, standing on the corner at Mr. Hooper's store? Quietly directing his goons, the yup-yup-yup-uh huh-uh huh guys, to take care of the last few outcries for peace on the street. Pimping out Gonzo's chickens and shaking Oscar down for his share of what the garbage can dweller is dealing. Poor Slimey, being used as bait to make Oscar tow the line.
It's just outrageous. I'm glad you spoke up about it. My hat's off to you, sir.