Funny Column To Pass Along To Parents, People Who Loved Sesame Street

This is a story/column that allegedly ran in the Post Gazette last week. It was passed to me from a couple of friends and now I'm passing to you...

'Sesame Street' moves to the wrong side of the tracks
Thursday, April 05, 2007

When I heard about the DVD release of "Sesame Street" episodes from the show's early years (they call it "Old School," ouch), I couldn't wait to get a glass of milk and a cookie, sit cross-legged on the floor and fire that sucker up.

Those early years of "Sesame Street" went a long way toward making me who I am today. I am considering legal action.

But my delight at rediscovering jingles, faces, songs and the comedy stylings of Bert and Ernie was tempered by the warning that came with the DVDs: Don't show these to kids.

As Bert would say, whaaaaa?

They were fine for me and my peers before we could reliably get through the entire alphabet. How could they warp the impressionable minds of today's toddlers? And could I resist rounding up a few tykes just to mess with their downy little heads?

I haven't watched "Sesame Street" in decades, and whatever temptation I might have felt to revisit that blessed block was seared out of me by Elmo, whom I consider the antiMuppet. The news from the Street was mostly bad as the years went by: Mr. Hooper went to the Great Soda Fountain in the Sky, Jim Henson's death took treasured characters and voices with him, and then the most recent outrage. The Fruit Monster.

The explosion of fat kids (I mean their numbers, not actual detonation) made "Sesame Street" put the beloved Cookie Monster on a diet, and his mantra is apparently now that cookies are a "sometimes thing."

Look. I am old enough to have watched the first season of "Sesame Street." I get mammograms. I have to exercise every damn day to keep from turning into a Snuffleupagus in heels. I get excited about steamed asparagus and eat flaxseed meal on purpose.

It would push me off the ragged edge of sanity to see Cookie Monster devour a head of cauliflower.

And, to be truly accurate about the diet of the googly-eyed glutton, while he did polish off a lot of cookies -- the few that got anywhere near his mouth -- they formed only part of a balanced diet that also included vast amounts of foam letters and numbers, shapes, picture frames and even manhole covers. The guy has an eating disorder that goes far beyond ordinary bingeing.

Oh -- and he's a PUPPET.

So, OK, I get that nowadays you can't let your impressionable cherub watch a shag rug with a sweet tooth consume an entire plate of cookies for fear the behavior will be emulated. But that's not the only now-unthinkable behavior that went on in the Old School days.

An instructive short film showed kids playing follow-the-leader, demonstrating the prepositions "over," "under," "around" and "through."

In a junk yard.

Totally free of adult supervision, they balanced on splintery sawhorses and wriggled through lengths of pipe. My mouth fell open. They weren't even wearing helmets.

Also without helmets were two young boys who, in another short film segment, rode their bikes to the zoo and spent the day there. They were in some kind of urban environment, possibly San Francisco. They were unchaperoned. Incredibly, they survived.

I did happen to notice that the junk yard kids and the bike boys were also not obese, but they probably weren't wearing sunscreen.

It was great fun seeing all the old gang again: Gordon (several incarnations) and Susan, Bob, Mr. Hooper, and later Luis, Maria and David. And with the exception of Mr. Hooper, they all look astoundingly young. (Mr. Hooper looks like guys who hit on me at parties.)

And what about all the star power? I had forgotten who-all appeared on that kiddie show: Raul Julia as neighbor Rafael, Arte Johnson doing his arboreal German bit from "Laugh-In," a VERY young Jesse Jackson reciting a poem, Bill Cosby reciting the alphabet, Lou Rawls singing the alphabet, the cast of "Bonanza" (and their horses) counting to 20 and Carol Burnett suggesting things to do with your nose. That's entertainment.

One thing did kind of surprise me, though: I didn't remember Oscar being quite that hostile. He's Oscar the Grouch, yeah, but he's not just haven't-had-my-coffee-yet grumpy. He's downright abusive. In an atmosphere where everybody is so gosh-darned nice and the watchwords are "sharing" and "cooperation," he pops out of his can to hurl invective like some spooky drunk unshaven neighbor in an undershirt. Two words, Oscar: anger management.

Cookie Monster gave us binge eating. Oscar gave us talk radio. We definitely have to keep this stuff away from the kids.


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(Samantha Bennett can be reached at sbennett@post-gazette.com. Her column was brought to you today by the letters P and G.)