PC Strikes Again! Sesame Street Not for Kids

[Chedva]

<p>At least not the early episodes:
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia. </p>

<p>Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” </p>

<p>Say what? At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.</p>

<p>Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

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The concept of the “inner city” — or “slums,” as The Times bluntly put it in its first review of “Sesame Street” — was therefore transformed into a kind of Xanadu on the show: a bright, no-clouds, clear-air place where people bopped around with monsters and didn’t worry too much about money, cleanliness or projecting false cheer. The Upper West Side, hardly a burned-out ghetto, was said to be the model.</p>

<p>People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.

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[UriA702]

<p>That is absolutely appalling. What in the world are the liberals doing to this country. It is time to cut the politically correct nonsense. You can’t shelter people from reality. It is Sesame Street for the love of god, Sesame Street! Give people a freagin break.</p>

[arachnophobia12]

<p>wow…that article is quite funny…</p>

[mommusic]

<p>Early episodes probably didn’t have anyone in a wheelchair either, or speaking Spanish. How provincial. ;)</p>

<p>OK, I could see a warning on the original “Little Rascals” episodes–those really were the Dark Ages of PC-dom. But a CYA warning on Sesame Street? </p>

[Hanna]

<p>This article just makes me sad…I loved Cookie Monster and the Grouch growing up because they were honest depictions of feelings I had every day. What a shame for kids to miss out on the classic Monsterpiece Theater sketches. Well, there’s always Youtube.</p>

<p>Of course, foolish overreaction to children’s fare is hardly a liberal phenomenon. Foolishness comes in every flavor. It’s not liberals campaigning to remove Harry Potter from school libraries or protect children from Tinky Winky the “gay” Teletubby.</p>

[mathmom]

<p>All the liberals I know think this is pretty ridiculous too. But at least they didn’t censor it, they just put a little warning on it. The weird thing is that the warning isn’t on the box, you don’t get it until you are sitting with your kids (assuming you are) watching. One of the things I liked about the early Sesame Street was that there was quite a bit of humor (like Monsterpiece Theater) that was clearly aimed at the parents more than the kids.</p>

[ucsd_ucla_dad]

<p>^^ Sounds similar to the old “Rockie and Bullwinkle” show with all of its subtle humor aimed at grownups.</p>