The Continued Decline of Civilization
Stop the world – I need to get off. I mean, I really need to.
I guess it had to happen. The censorship and dumbing-down of every possible form of entertainment to the level of what a middle-class stay-at-home mom thinks her two-year-old can handle continues unabated. If it’s not outrage over Tinky Winky or SpongeBob, it’s subliminal sex messages in Disney animated features, or moaning over the “family hour” on TV not being held sacred by Hollywood, advertisers, and people with “off” buttons on their televisions.
However, the Dumb it Down crowd has sunk to a new low. Their latest victim: Monsterpiece Theater.
You remember those skits, right? Cookie Monster (since 2006, forced to sing “Cookies are a sometimes food” in place of “C is for Cookie”) sat in a chair and narrated various stories. Unfortunately, he also had a pipe. Sometimes, he even gobbled the pipe down along with his cookies! Tres indecent!
For this reason, Volumes 1 and 2 of Sesame Street have this rather bizarre warning stamped on them: These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.
Apparently, preschool children of 2007 are so much frailer than their 1960s counterparts, that the vision of a puppet holding a pipe will fry their little minds. And what about that phrasing — may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child — don’t you love it? What “needs” are they worried about? The “need” to be talked down to? The “need” for censorship of even the least offensive images? The mind boggles.
Sesame Street producers have bowed before in the face of parental pseudo-outrage and now have done so again over this terrible image of a puppet with a pipe, and have released an apologetic statement that Cookie Monster “modeled the wrong behavior.” How very gutless of them.
So, there you have it. The Cookie Monster of today is on a diet and exclaims that cookies “are a sometimes food,” while the Cookie Monster of the 1960s earns an adults-only rating, as if he were pornography and not a cheerful puppet who teaches children to spell.
Meanwhile, across the pond, the British are dealing with their own Dumb it Down Brigade. Turns out children shouldn’t see veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars who’ve lost limbs in service to their country because seeing them might be “scary.” The incident in question happened when recuperating soldiers were exercising in a pool where parents and children were present. Parents heaped verbal abuse on the soldiers until they were forced to leave. Coincidentally, the incident happened shortly after the government began making public appeals for civilians to do more to welcome veterans back home, a drive called Help for Heroes.
At least in Britain, there’s been little support for the mothers who want their children shielded from the possibility of seeing a wounded veteran. The former head of the British armed forces said, “These people are beneath contempt and everything should be done to get their names and publish them in the press. It is contemptible that people who have given up their limbs for their country should be so abused when they are trying to get fit again.”
I know it’s a big one, Santa, but for Christmas, I’d like you to give these parents a sense of humor that isn’t short-circuited by the Cookie Monster, and a sense of respect for our veterans and what they have sacrificed instead of being vindictive, abusive assholes. If you can’t do that, could you at least fill their stockings with lumps of coal? They deserve it.
Copyright . Published 1 December 2007 in Editorials.
Reader comments
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I have read about Sesame Street. I grew up on it and wasn’t effected, I’m not even an obsese chain-smoker today!! The veteran thing is particularly horrible though, those men would have been through ENOUGH physical and emotional pain including the loss of a limb/s they do NOT need or deserve to be treated like that NO living person or being does!!!!
I’m anti-the war but NOONE deserves this and those people who heaped abuse deserve a LOT worse than coal in their sacks and gosh it’s not teaching their kids to be very tolerant now is it!
I personally feel the quality (esp. content) of cartoons has gone down but I can’t put my finger on it. E.g. there was Beauty and the Beast and Stuart Little which were good but now a lot of kiddie cartoons seem pretty similar.
It’s a bit frustrating that we have satalite TV and love it but even though there are already well explained parental controls, we a childfree couple still often have to enter a pin number for programs before the watershed!
permalink — 2 December 2007, 10:25
I knew about the Sesame Street brouhaha, but…Jeebus Effing Christ on a stick, please tell me that veteran thing is a joke. How can any parent – any human – be so self-absorbed and ignorant as to verbally abuse wounded war veterans because the sight of them might “scare” the widdle pweshus baybees?!? Look, I don’t support this idiotic and wasteful war in the slightest, but my anger is aimed at the higher-ups who got us into this quagmire, not the people injured by it. Those selfish, entitlement-minded British breeders deserve every ounce of shame that can be heaped on them, and then some.
permalink — 5 December 2007, 18:14
That is horrible. Those poor veterans being verbally forced to leave a pool because the children might get scared. A friend of mine has only one hand, is she going to hide her arms because she might scare the children? How insensitive of them.
I watched Sesame Street when I was younger as well. I’m the furthest thing from an obese smoker. I eat healthy and never smoke. Cookie Monster never fried my brains.
permalink — 5 December 2007, 21:56
Yeah, I might be fat and a smoker – but it sure ain’t Cookie Monster’s fault.
All kinds of kids watched Sesame Street, and Speed Racer, and Land of the Lost, and Bugs Bunny, and some of us turned out crappy and some of us turned out good. Some of us blow through stop signs and some of us are archaeologists. Some of us even hunt rabbits.
And some of us turned out to be the kind of parents who feel like controlling what every other kid should watch.
permalink — 16 December 2007, 19:29