Come and Play.. and be warped for life!

Warning!! Early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.

According to the New York Times, this is the warning label on the Original Sesame Street 1 and 2 DVDs. Yes, Sesame Street was clearly subversive and dangerous stuff! Having grown up watching the show, I have clearly been permanently damaged. It explains so much.

The New York Times reported that they 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.” 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.

What has this world come to? Are children so much dimmer these days that they can't be shown anything in the least bit off color, un PC or true to life, for fear they will grow up warped? Are they only allowed to see happy, safe, watered-down images of people with sunshine shooting out of every orifice? Actually, if you ask me, SS was always the most PC of shows. Where else do humans and various creatures of every color and ethnic background, along with blue-colored furry monsters with a "substance abuse" problem and big yellow birds with imaginary friends live in perfect harmony. There's never a question of belonging or acceptance. Everyone is equal, everyone belongs. Today, Big Bird would quickly be fed some Prozac to help him with those voices in his head, and the Cookie Monster's friends would stage an intervention to help him with his dependency issues. I've been reading about some of the changes that were made to the show over the years, and I found a Sesame Street newsletter from 2000 stating that the character Roosevelt Franklin was taken off the show. Apparently, complaints were made that Roosevelt was a bad "negro stereotype" and a poor example for children. He was written off the show for his "bad behavior". This, of course, is the perfect lesson for kids. "Behave yourself, or you, too, can be written off" LoL

I haven't watched a new episode of Sesame Street in probably 30 years, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't recognize the show now. Watered down, PC'd to death, everyone always happy and gay...no, not gay, unless you believe the salacious rumors about the true nature of Bert and Ernie's relationship. It's ridiculous, although if you watch the episode below, where Bert tells Ernie not to eat cookies in his bed because he'll get crumbs in his pajamas and he'll itch, so Ernie climbs into Bert's bed with him to eat his cookies there instead, would raise serious eyebrows if it were aired on TV today. Not a problem though, because that episode, or any other episode where Bert and Ernie seemed unnaturally close would never be shown these days. Do they even live together anymore? Has Bert moved out and gotten his own swinging bachelor pad condo? Have their twin beds in the same room been moved to separate bedrooms? Actually, not that I remember a whole lot about actual individual episodes of the show, since I haven't seen it in decades, but I believe Bert and Ernie are meant to be kids. Even though they look and act like adults, I seem to recall an episode where Ernie is dressed as a doctor, but he says he can't tell Bert what's wrong with him, because he's not a doctor yet, and that he first needs to get through kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and so on all the way up to medical school before he can be a doctor. I just think it's ridiculous to sensor everything to death, the shows should be shown in their entirety as originally aired. I really think the kids can handle it.

 You can sign a petition here: LOL http://www.petitiononline.com/oscar/petition.html

Here's some YouTube-y goodness to enjoy... if they'll play here.. LOL QUICK MAKE YOUR CHILDREN LEAVE THE ROOM BEFORE YOU HIT PLAY!!   If they don't show up, you can search YouTube for some great Sesame memories!

Subway SongThe Count meets the Cookie Monster.Bert and Ernie.. don't eat cookies in bedSOME Off MY FAVORITE SESAME STREET SONGS!! Accidents HappenI Love TrashMahna Mahna