Stop the planet so I can get the hell off

Alright, I normally reserve the rants for a different blog. And typically I like to keep this blog light and upbeat. But the straw broke. I can't take it anymore. The fruit loops that seem to be coming out of the woodwork in vastly increasing numbers have finally gone off the deep deep deep end. ***I warn you, this post is full of venom.***

The hubster asked on the way into work if I happened to see THIS article.

Where to start? I don't even know. So, let's just take this paragraph by paragraph.

"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."

Ok, how are today's preschool children different? I mean, Sesame Street was the wholesome show, the good show that taught us all to just get along, how to read, write, and that everyone can be friends. We were just all one big happy family in a neighborhood. How is this suddenly not suitable for children?

Is it a race thing? Perhaps white bread yuppie parents don't want their children to get along with *gasp* black children or children of other races and cultures?

Is it an imagination thing? God forbid children have to figure out for themselves that the talking animals aren't real? Cause damn, I am far more traumatized by a telle-tubby than I am by Big Bird.

Is it because it took place in the inner city and again, yuppie parents are in fear of their children learning that not everyone grows up in a nice little mcmansion that their parents can't afford driving cars that make them feel important, outdoing their neighbors and spiraling out of control into debt?

What? What could possibly make Sesame Street not suitable for the preschooler of today?

"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..."

She's kidding right? Or now will she need to go to a therapist? Is her confidence in herself and who she is so weak that she actually had that reaction? Or are we so desparate to play the victim these days that she is imagining dollar signs as she sues one of the greatest children's institutions ever created? Trying to claim some post traumatic stress disorder? Latent memories of wrongs done to us? Seriously, WHAT?

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.

Or is it as simple as this? To think that the world was once so innocent, good, and wholesome that the culture shock might send today's priveleged brats into convulsions. You mean to tell me there was once a time when people had to walk places? Work for a living? Write something on a piece of paper? Help one another? You mean there was once a time when people were held accountable for their actions? Where kids were expected to actually actively learn things and not just be babysat for 12 years and then pushed out into society unprepared and disfunctional?

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.

And this is the saddest part of the article. There was a time when we could do this without fear and suspicion. We should weep over the fact that that sort of thing can't happen anymore.

I asked Carol-Lynn Parente, the executive producer of “Sesame Street,” how exactly the first episodes were unsuitable for toddlers in 2007. She told me about Alistair Cookie and the parody “Monsterpiece Theater.” Alistair Cookie, played by Cookie Monster, used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. According to Parente, “That modeled the wrong behavior” — smoking, eating pipes — “so we reshot those scenes without the pipe, and then we dropped the parody altogether.”

Yes, because SO MANY of us 30 and 40 somethings are munching on pipes. You have got to be freak'n kidding me? What? WHAT?

Which brought Parente to a feature of “Sesame Street” that had not been reconstructed: the chronically mood-disordered Oscar the Grouch. On the first episode, Oscar seems irredeemably miserable — hypersensitive, sarcastic, misanthropic. (Bert, too, is described as grouchy; none of the characters, in fact, is especially sunshiney except maybe Ernie, who also seems slow.) “We might not be able to create a character like Oscar now,” she said.

Oh please, Just do what everyone does with today's angry and or depressed youth, put them on drugs.

As for Cookie Monster, he can be seen in the old-school episodes in his former inglorious incarnation: a blue, googly-eyed cookievore with a signature gobble (“om nom nom nom”).............and in the early seasons he comes across a Child’s First Addict.

Ok, finally now I understand why everyone looks at me in disgust as I gobble a dozen cookies spewing crumbs everywhere. I have Cookie Monster to blame for my love of junk food and my bad table manners..............Give me a break.

In East Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1978, 95 percent of households with kids ages 2 to 5 watched “Sesame Street.” The figure was even higher in Washington. Nationwide, though, the number wasn’t much lower, and was largely determined by the whims of the PBS affiliates: 80 percent in houses with young children.

So, let me get this straight, if these shows are no longer deemed suitable for preschoolers shouldn't that mean that the 80-95% of us that were subjected to this "filth" should have major issues? Wouldn't that mean that a whole bunch of us in our 30 and 40's should be really messed up people?

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.

Oh yes, let's keep a show that did all those things away from today's children. God forbid they ever think for themselves, get an imagination, or read a book. Damn, that would ruin them. Computers might grow dusty. Teachers might stop fearing having to walk into the class room and face todays overpriveleged overprotected brats. And the worse possible outcome: more children like me, Girl J, Hubster, Boy J, Boy W, Boy S, Boy G in this world. Oh lordy NO! It's probably a good thing they are keeping kids away from Sesame Street. We grew up well adjusted, responsible and accountable for our actions. We wouldn't want that in todays world, oh good lord no.