I love absolutely every second of this panel, from the insinuation that a gay male high school student was named prom queen because of Elmo to the assertion that totalitarian regimes in the Middle East are anti-church and anti-traditional gender roles.
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I wish I was a hollywood big shot. If that guy had come to my house asking about the liberal conspiracy I could have told him some funny stories.
Girls playing with trucks and boys playing with dolls is a problem and an assault on our nation’s moral foundation because…
Ben Shapiro? The former Virgin Ben Shapiro? Writing a book to lecture me on the horrors of Liberal Hollywood? The Bush Jr. of the Literary set (a title he shares with Jonah Goldberg)?
Ben, you little weasel, you want to know what a good family value is? A strong sense of shame. A strong enough sense of shame to realize that you need to get off the wingnut welfare gravy train and get a real job. Somewhere obscure enough so we never have to hear from you or see your weasel face again.
Admit to yourself that you are nothing but a leech on society, sucking (along with many others) the life blood from the political sphere. You’ve done nothing but make the world a worse place for your whole (short) life. Give it up…
I want to see the conservative Sesame Street, with puppets advocating that you beat up anyone who’s different and castigating small children for stepping outside their assigned gender roles. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to make due with Wonder Showzen dvds.
Liberals are so sanctimonious, thinking their morality is superior. Like those complusory prayer periods. Making everyone pray to their dark gods.
Allison, I noticed that too.
Mind you, I think once that was because she was in the middle of saying “Secular humanists believe people are fundamentally good while..” and I presume they knew that was at best going into “are only saved by Jesus”.
But yeah, that was kind of amazing.
Poor Miss America 2008! Doesn’t she know she’s just supposed to look pretty and gaze adoringly at the men? How dare she have opinions, much less say something as controversial as “liberals believe human nature is basically good while conservatives believe it’s—”
Did a gay boy really get elected prom queen in Ohio? Or was that just Glee?
I bet it was the one where Ross’ ex-wife and her girlfriend have a baby that was the F-U to the right.
These people are pathetic, but at least Miss America realizes she’s part of the 27%ers.
I watched the whole thing without vomiting and only requiring one Guinness to wash it down with. Where is my gold star?
I really had trouble just watching it. It’s like the whole house got moved from the foundation and got put inside one of those carnival fun houses with the distorted mirrors. Another instance of starting from unquestioned assumptions that really really need to be questioned.
@9: I know what you mean. Listening to conservatives circle-jerking each other like this is painful. I’m a minute into the video. I paused to read the comments here, and I’m not sure I have it in me to press play again.
I did notice that Shapiro went straight for the “smear it by associating it with minorities” dog whistle. *gasp* Sesame Street was designed to help black and Hispanic kids learn how to read! :O He pretends that his problem with this is that liberals are the real racists, but I’m not buying it. Conservatives automatically dislike anything designed to help poor people, especially poor minorities, so I can only assume that’s the effect he’s trying to generate when he says that.
OH my god.
1. Love how, when Sean asks how many young people share our values Ben knows hes supposed to squeak it in at just under 50%, but Miss America laughs in his face and says 20 %. Think about those two number; one is an embattled slight minority, the other is whoa aging dinosaur territory.
2. Republicans want to air their values in entertainment? FUCKING WRITE SOME GOOD SHOW. GET SOME RATINGS. Oh wait, you can’t.
3. Love how the black guy THE BLACK GUY is talking about the sin of entitlement.
Caren, a quick Google search reveals that a gay boy was indeed elected Prom queen. In Los Angeles. In 2009. I suspect that these people are secret Gleeks and got confused.
Yeah, not really.
More relevant: Transgender McFatter senior crowned prom queen
http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2011/05/transgender-mcfatter-senior-crowned-prom-queen.html
Note: McFatter is the name of the school, not a taunt.
2. Republicans want to air their values in entertainment? FUCKING WRITE SOME GOOD SHOW. GET SOME RATINGS. Oh wait, you can’t.
It’s amazing how incapable Republicans are of seeing their ideological hypocrisy here. They claim to love the free market, with its awesome invisible hand. But if the media has a liberal bias (which is bullshit anyway, obviously), it’s because that’s what the free market demands. Hollywood is a business. If they think Hollywood is more interested in expressing an ideology than making a buck, they’re delusional. Some individuals within Hollywood may have a message they sincerely want to express, but overall Hollywood is in it to make a profit. Oliver Stone doesn’t get funding because of teh librulz, he gets funding because Hollywood execs expect that his movies will make a certain amount of money.
I just don’t get how conservatives think a profit-driven business plans to thrive by pushing a supposedly unpopular ideology.
Andy Griffith is a hotbed of liberalism. “Friends” was really a big FU to the right. Wow, who knew?
2. Republicans want to air their values in entertainment? FUCKING WRITE SOME GOOD SHOW. GET SOME RATINGS. Oh wait, you can’t.
Why write good shows? Better to just claim shows that are good as conservative. That’s why 300 and Batman: Dark Knight and Star Wars are all - deep down inside - harrowing stories of conservative virtue and moral values that only FOX News talking heads really recognize.
Did a gay boy really get elected prom queen in Ohio? Or was that just Glee?
Hahahaha. I think this is the story that has the Virgin Ben all tingly in his man parts.
*sigh* Kurt and Blaine were so cute together.
For reasons too bizarre to go in to here, the company I work for did business with a law firm that employed The Virgin Ben, a prestigious firm in Century City. He’s long gone from there, he runs something called Benjamin Shapiro Legal Consulting. Translation: I was too nutty for a white-shoe firm that my dad got me in to and besides, the wingnut welfare was too good to pass up.
So it really was Kurt Hummel?! How funny.
Kelsey Fucking Grammer has a job. So does Gary Sinese. John “Cliff Klaven” Ratzenberger has a role in every PIXAR cartoon. Conservative assholes all, they and their peers are hired all the time.
Poor, urban, black and Hispanic children had demonstrably lower reading abilities. Sesame street was conceived as a way to help those kids catch up to their more privileged white peers. It succeeded so well, that over time people forgot it wasn’t intended for white kids.
Even the producers forgot. When they redesigned the sets in 2000, apparently they thought the sets were just old, because suddenly everything was clean and gentrified. The original sets were grimy because it was supposed to be NYC, not a fantasy world. It ended up looking like Barneyland.
Tl;dr, I know, but I really know much more about the series and its effects than I should.
Except that between the 1970s and the 1990s, most neighborhoods did look better.
Sometimes we look back and think that things were better or worse than they were, but we can look back and say, yeah, the 1970s were more full of trash and grime and bad air.
OFF TOPIC:
Do you recall the earlier discussion on Libya where I made a prediction about troops on the ground?
I love how indignant Shapiro gets about Friends being an “eff you” the right. “These people say this openly!” Yeah, dude, it’s called freedom of speech.
They’ve resurrected Ben Shapiro? Fuck, that’s sad.
I also love the implication that conservatives are an oppressed group against which it’s possible to discriminate, like women and ethnic minorities. If you’re conservative and you’re not getting work in Hollywood, it’s most likely because your screenplay for that pro-abstinence sex comedy just plain sucked
If you’re conservative and you’re not getting work in Hollywood, it’s most likely because your screenplay for that pro-abstinence sex comedy just plain sucked
“But how can that be? It’s at least as good as Mallard Filmore or Day-By-Day, and my conservative friends find those just hilarious!!”
Do you remember David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”? The first two thirds of the movie can be read as a paranoid fantasy by a dying drugged out would-be actress explaining why she never made it in Hollywood - they were plotting against her.
Sorta like that, only with flabby white guys instead of hot lesbians.
Dammit Jesse! I couldn’t get through that whole piece, and still my IQ has been reduced by about 10 points.
“If you’re conservative and you’re not getting work in Hollywood, it’s most likely because your screenplay for that pro-abstinence sex comedy just plain sucked”
Hey, they made a movie from Ayn Rand’s adequately nasty-sex-filled but ponderous Atlas Shrugged and it bombed like the Hindenburg.
They could easily have emphasized more marketable aspects (and chopped off 3/4 of the book) and end up with something that at least tried to lure in people who weren’t already Rand fan boys, but they blew it. And it wasn’t “liberal Hollywood values”, it just plain sucked, as did An American Carol and all the other crap films and TV shows that start off as a Conservative fuck-you to the rest of us, instead of ending up that way…
Reichwing Entertainment: Contradiction in Terms…
Didn’t they try to do an answer to The Daily Show a couple years ago? I seem to remember some excruciatingly unfunny clips.
Ah, found it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjIfaMwIFxU
It’s gawdawful.
“It’s gawdawful.”
...oh, come on now, let’s be fair. The shitty laugh-track they used on the pre-taped “BO Magazine” bit sounded liked it was having a good time…sort of…
Hey, they made a movie from Ayn Rand’s adequately nasty-sex-filled but ponderous Atlas Shrugged and it bombed like the Hindenburg.
That will never, ever, ever stop being funny!
Why write good shows? Better to just claim shows that are good as conservative?
Exactly. Remember the guy who claimed that Toy Story 3 portrayed the evils of socialism?
Being one of those people who don’t really exist - libertarian - I didn’t agree with their assessments.
That doesn’t mean it’s ok to lie about what they said. There was no mention of the middle east whatsoever; it was about any totalitarian regime. That would include hardline “progressives” (a term I think is obsolete and entirely misused) who are actually socialist (which is obviously totalitarian), communism, and any form of totalitarianism. And yes, hardline progressives certainly attack the church (Christofascist Godbags anyone?) just as communism does. There are other totalitarian regimes who misuse some form of religion to their own ends - National Socialism, various Islamic regimes that oppress women and the poor, etc.
Yes, I guess you are a “libertarian” if you think that socialism is totalitarianism.
@Anonymouse: I notice you left off a few political philosophies that are basically a religion unto themselves. Free Market libertarianism is a really good one. And it is a religion. There’s a basic belief, and absolutely nothing can be allowed to stand against it. The Free Market cures all and has never harmed anyone. Of course the only people that actually believe that are people that never picked up a history book.
See, faith in the mighty “Free Market” requires ignoring all the shit directly caused by it. Things like the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, our discovery of what “phossy jaw” is, children being stripped of their clothes and forced to crawl through dark mine shafts, and Pullman towns tell us exactly how well the free market regulates itself, which is “Not at all.”.
But like most religions, facts don’t matter when you have faith. Free marketeers are pretty much the intellectual equivalent of Christians screaming that they don’t care about your stupid “science” they KNOW the earth is 6000 years old.
Some people may view it that way (as a matter of faith), JThompson; but anyone who bothers to study history and economics and justice knows better. Such people, who take things like a free market - absent the corresponding rights and law that must accompany it, and *why* they must, and the precise reasons why certain economic/justice policies work and others don’t, do more harm than good, whether free-market or socialist/progressive. I am more than capable of explaining precisely why I know what I know, and what I know, and the predictive power of same (predictive power being obviously a litmus test of the truth or falsehood of any hypothesis), and how they have played out in various situations in the past, etc. Anyone who can’t is lacking, wherever they fall on the political grid.
I understand that it is constantly said by certain…er…talking heads that those crazy wingnuts don’t think or understand anything about what or why they know certain things, but rest assured, that is not the case. Whoever it is the case for needs to be educated before they take up a cause or before they mistake certain results for root causes. I wouldn’t have mentioned it if I were in that place.
However…it’s kind of sad that the main point was missed so hard, that it whooshed so fast over certain heads that I heard the sonic boom.
He lied. They didn’t say what he said they did. I didn’t agree with them on their assessment but I don’t need to lie about what they said to know what they’re wrong about. *shrug* How that got lost in these sidebars is…well not very surprising, I suppose, considering the nature of the reading material here.
I think my brain exploded at Sean Hannity ranting about sanctimonious liberals trying to force their values on others. Has he never seen his own show?
We need to really explore a way of converting the raw bullshit that comes out of Fox News into electricity. There’s enough renewable biomass coming out of that network to completely end our dependence on fossil fuels.
And it’s hardly news that Sesame Street “promotes” homosexuality (conservative code for “showing homosexuals as actual human beings rather than hideous demon-creatures). Hello, Ernie and Bert have been part of the cast since the beginning! It’s high time we just let them get married already.
FWIW I thought your reply worth answering or I wouldn’t have. It’s apparent you put at least some effort into it, even if it may have been said and done.
jeevmon; I don’t know why they focused on that - if I recall what the creators who were interviewed actually said, it was that Sesame Street was in part to promote leftism, not homosexuality. But these people discussing it on Fox have their own agenda.
Anonymouse, if you really think socialism is “obviously totalitarian”, I have no choice but to ask you where you took Poli Sci 101. Sending them your post should be enough for them to refund your tuition.
Some people may view it that way (as a matter of faith), JThompson; but anyone who bothers to study history and economics and justice knows better. Such people, who take things like a free market - absent the corresponding rights and law that must accompany it, and *why* they must, and the precise reasons why certain economic/justice policies work and others don’t, do more harm than good, whether free-market or socialist/progressive.
There exists a strong deontological strain of libertarianism to the point where it resembles something between a cargo cult and a suicide cult. I don’t think it’s unfair to point this out.
Even the “consequentialist” arguments for libertarianism fall short—Hayek argued that the adoption of the welfare state by western countries after World War II would inevitably lead to totalitarianism. Now I admit that it’s been a long time since I’ve been to the UK, but last I checked, it was a liberal democracy.
I understand that it is constantly said by certain…er…talking heads that those crazy wingnuts don’t think or understand anything about what or why they know certain things, but rest assured, that is not the case.
I think most of us have a lot of direct experience with crazy wingnuts who don’t think or understand anything about what or why they know certain things.
I think most of us have a lot of direct experience with crazy wingnuts who don’t think or understand anything about what or why they know certain things.
I’m sure most of us do. Some of us also have family who used to be thinking and fairly liberal but seem to have gotten too tired to bother any more and so fallen back into unexamined reliance on the cultural norms they abandond in their teens.
My mother would be one of those. How someone who was basically a hippie in the late 60s and early 70s, adopted 2 mixed racial children and worked in education all her adult life (as did her current spouse) can spout some of the talking points she does without even thinking about how Her Own Life is proof against them is beyond me.
Can’t comment on the clip; I have to wait until I’m home to watch it.
“There exists a strong deontological strain of libertarianism to the point where it resembles something between a cargo cult and a suicide cult. I don’t think it’s unfair to point this out.”
Damn right, and it’s only a “strain” of libertarianism to the extent that most “believers” who call themselves libertarians are merely “conservatives” (in the current sense, having very little to do with anything recognizable as conservative) who found the Bush/Cheney regime stunk too bad for them to admit they voted twice for that reign of error.
But maybe that’s only in the Red/conservative parts of Southern California, where you can’t turn around without finding Yet Another Bogus “Libertarian” denying they and their philosophies had anything to do with the way this country has devolved since Reagan was elected…
Hahaha:
Clearly Fox News is focusing Ben Shapiro focusing on Sesame Street to make Ben Shapiro look like a nut job. Those liberal plants at Fox are so devious in their methods.
I think it has been pretty obviously leftist from day-one. It seemed overly multi-culti and very ‘urban oriented.’
You know, telling kids to play nice/share/take turns and helping them learn the alphabet and numbers to 12 should not be seen as left wing, but they do seem to be.
I’m honestly struggling to imagine what “totalitarian regimes” that he’s thinking of. I suppose the obvious example is the Marxist-Leninist regimes of the 20th century, given that they had a nominal program of women’s rights, but past a certain point they were extremely conservative, abandoning all of the more radical sexual and gender politics which floated around in the early communist revolutions. The early Soviet Union brought women’s right to about what would be achieved in the West c.1960, but after Stalin came to power in the late 1920s it pretty much ground to a halt, and no other Marxist-Leninist state ever really crossed that barrier until after the breakup of the Soviet bloc (which is to say, in most cases, neve at all).
Unless, of course, he’s simply under the impression that anti-clericalism necessarily entails radical sexual and gender politics, which would be a lengthy way of saying that he’s a blinkered moron.
Why “shouldn’t” they be? Conservatism is about denying resources, such as education and social capital, to disliked groups.
Sesame Street used to focus on “cooperation”. It was their big word.
It was multi-culti on purpose, since that purpose was to help poor urban minorities.
And it did. One of my profs at Stanford was in the middle of a multiple year study of siblings and school readiness when Sesame Street came out. The younger siblings were all so dramatically more ready for kindergarten than the older siblings, even those in their control group, that their original experiment had to be scrapped, though it ended up being a great piece for demonstrating early learning and TV.
I was 2 when Sesame Street started. My younger brother has Down Syndrome, so I watched the first 25 years of the show. I was majorly disappointed in the revamping (the New Coke-ing, which had to be revised immediately) and Elmo-fying
Damn you auto correct. Posting while I’m composing!
They modified SS to keep up with the competitors, and the competition is mostly focused on the majority. It’s actually less progressive than it was.
Establishing a totalitarian regime by attacking the institutions of church and family? Sounds kinda like Jesus.
“You know, telling kids to play nice/share/take turns and helping them learn the alphabet and numbers to 12 should not be seen as left wing, but they do seem to be.”
And now those fascist commies have taken it to the next level and started teaching numbers all the way up to 20, can you believe the unmitigated nerve of it all? Where will it all end if they are not stopped from their mission of educating the poor, stinking masses and encouraging non-violence and cooperation?!?!?
In all seriousness, it really does seem like Hannity et al have turned the real world upside down and declared their bizzaro world interpretation of this stuff as proof of why the U.S. is going to hell and as reason for mass panic as a result. How people can actually say that stuff with a straight face and not realize what utter nonsense is being spewed is simply beyond my comprehension.
It was multi-culti on purpose, since that purpose was to help poor urban minorities.
Telling minority children that they’re allowed to value themselves and that they deserve to learn as much as anyone else seems like a pretty inarguable good thing, but conservatives still manage to smear it by just shoving it under the label “multiculturalism.” It’s one of their less subtle dog whistles.
Though as with many things, even the ones who don’t explicitly think to themselves, “Shit, we have to keep those brown kids from learning too much!” and who thus don’t consider themselves racist still have a pretty visible kneejerk reaction to anything that doesn’t reaffirm the self-perception of whites as being the most important people in the world. (Again, “multiculturalism”)
When liberals say that conservatives don’t think, they’re being, well, liberal, and trying to come up with the explanation for the backasswards views being expressed that’s the nicest.
“I think most of us have a lot of direct experience with crazy wingnuts who don’t think or understand anything about what or why they know certain things.”
As I already acknowledged the existence of such people (who exist on all points on the grid) and believe they do far more harm than good, there’s not much need to go further. I can speak for me and people who I know and read who do not fit these molds; I don’t speak for those who believe something without really understanding why. However, I don’t accept being painted or tarred with that brush when I am not one of such people. No more, no less. Ironically, I never get called upon to explain the actual views or why they are held (by me and the people I just mentioned) - at least, not by the left. They seem to always have their minds made up far in advance and would rather not know.
Helen, the point was it was some of the creators of the show who made the statements that it was intended to be left-wing/“progressive”; not just some bizarre perception on the part of non-leftists. Where Fox chose to take it was another matter; as I think I’ve already been clear on.
In fact I’ve just repeated two points I’ve already stated - that’s about the limit. See you if something new comes up, maybe.
“Helen, the point was it was some of the creators of the show who made the statements that it was intended to be left-wing/“progressive”; not just some bizarre perception on the part of non-leftists.”
OMFG! Adults with life experience and a certain political perspective expressed opinions that were not Reichwing nuttery! I’ll bring the torches and you bring the pitchforks. This cannot be allowed to stand!...
Did you hear? They want to fluoridate children’s ice cream! And somebody who helped create Sesame Street thought that was alright!
Just how deep does this evil liberal conspiracy to contaminate our precious bodily fluids go?...
Hey, guys, you should be properly abashed at Anonymouse’s “I shan’t be back.” Can’t you see how very serious those arguments are? Arguments which have never been made in such detail or with such care.
Wow, you people are fucking bizarre. It’s sort of funny watching you flail and put words in people’s mouths that they never said…but you get it from Amanda and Jesse, so I suppose it’s nothing new.
“It’s sort of funny watching you flail and put words in people’s mouths that they never said…but you get it from Amanda and Jesse, so I suppose it’s nothing new.”
...I might be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that sarcasm and cynicism have been around for a few thousand years. At least. This was even before there was anyone snarking on the intertubes (hard to believe, but I swear it’s true). I know I was doing it in meatspace before Amanda or Jesse were born…
Miss America is the only person on that panel who sounds like she put any thought into this subject before going on the show (and that includes the guy who’s plugging a book about it), and the three men interrupt her and talk over her every time she opens her mouth. I’m not sure if it’s sexism, or if Fox News commentators automatically shout down anyone who seems to know what they’re talking about. They know how ugly that can get.
And, yes, “Sesame Street” was created to advance a progressive agenda, assuming that teaching poor kids to read and write is a progressive agenda. That was the original point of the show, teaching poor kids to read and count. It makes me sad that, not only has “Sesame Street” drifted away from its initial aegis, we now have an entire TV channel dedicated to the thoughts and opinions of people who are proudly anti-teaching-poor-kids.
Mikey - what you did wasn’t sarcasm; it was dumb. What *I* did was sarcasm. You suck at internet.
Shaenon; she did seem better prepared than the others but still didn’t make a hell of a lot of good points.
As to the show; take it up with the creators; they’re the ones who made the claim, and they weren’t talking about teaching kids to read and count. And it’s pretty dumb to act as though THAT would be what anyone objects to - I mean honestly, you can’t possibly believe the shit you just wrote there. It’s ludicrous.
Maybe Fox isn’t that stupid. If people are just gonna pull shit out of their asses anyway, and make ridiculous claims about intent, they might as well push the envelope and say over-the-top things they extrapolate by…well, by pulling it out of their asses as to other people’s intent. The creators say they had a leftist agenda; Fox pulls “pro-gay” out of it and that bothers them or something…whatever. If they’re going to be accused of being a bunch of baby-rapers, might as well grab the brass ring.
“Mikey - what you did wasn’t sarcasm; it was dumb. What *I* did was sarcasm. You suck at internet.”
Ouch! Now I’m going to have a bruise there. Thanks a lot…
I can’t believe this is still going on, but fuck yeah they were progressive.
Do you realize Sesame Street started in 1969? Any idea what the US was like merely 5 years after the Civil Rights Act was passed?
Remember “It’s not easy being green”? Kermit the Frog, i.e., Jim Henson, singing a Joey Raposo song ABOUT HOW BEING A DIFFERENT COLOR FROM MOST IS A DAMN FINE THING. Huge.
Believing minority urban kids are deserving of respect and an education equal to whites WAS MOST CERTAINLY A PROGRESSIVE ACT. And yes, there are fuckers who don’t think the darkies deserve an education. Ben Shapiro shows it up there where he complains about how the show was directed at black and Hispanic kids. Then to protect himself from charges of racism, tries to claim it was because liberals are the real racists instead of dealing with the FACT that black and Hispanic kids get shit public schools, then and now.
Comments to the video say it, too. Sesame Street was “too urban” for them.
Current Sesame Street sucks ass. It started sucking when Jim Henson died, b/c frankly, Jim was a comic genius who cared about the world as a dyed in the wool liberal. They did their gentrification revamp right when I had my son. It was universally reviled, and they walked it back, but it is nowhere near the show it once was. I say this as someone who watched nearly every episode for the first 3 decades. Henson was able to amuse both parents and children. The current philosophy doesn’t seem to care much about amusing adults, which makes watching together much less enjoyable.
Thank goodness for YouTube and the original clips you can find there. Ladybugs’ Picnic has taught my kids the numbers to 12 better than the wretched Elmo ever could.
I miss the progressive, culture challenging and culture changing Sesame Street.
I can speak for me and people who I know and read who do not fit these molds;
I guess I’m happy for you, or something. But you’re the one chiming in to defend Fox News’s ridiculousness.
I don’t really take libertarians that seriously. Basically they’re right wing but don’t want the social stigma that comes along with being a republican and you don’t want to be called to account for the destructive ideas the right has perpetrated on the US and on its culture. But then you’re desperately hoping for respect from the left for your ignorant right wing ideas. Which then makes you desperate to defend Fox News to “get back” at us. If libertarians were really a strain of liberalism, as Manju claims, then you’d be as disgusted with the right wing republican culture as we are. Instead you take their side because ultimately you feel they’re “your people.”
Caren, don’t worry. The Reichwing will replace Sesame Street with Walnut Street, where Oscar the Grouch rules with an iron fist, forcing many of the other characters to work for him in his offshore sweatshop, earning a dollar a day sewing shoddy clothes to sell in WalMart, but the cost of rent and food from the company store mean they get further into debt every day.
Burt and Ernie are sent to prison for being gay. Before their arrest, they were both executives in a large health insurance corporation, best known for denying coverage any time a policy-holder needs care of any sort more complex than “take two aspirin and go to bed”.
Elmo lives on the street and has to hide from I.C.E. because he’s an anchor baby. Oscar had his parents deported after a raid at the chicken processing factory where they were working illegally. He’s worried about proposed legislation that would require his teachers to rat him out at the rundown urban public school where he’s trying to get educated.
The Count is being held in Gitmo after he was arbitrarily arrested as a terrorist simply because he has an accent and his clothes are weird. Grover works as a guard there and tortures The Count every day for his own amusement.
Kermit lives in a trailer just outside of town, where he has a lab that makes crystal meth. Although appearing to be kindly, if secretive, he actually molests children in his neighborhood. He gets angry sometimes because many of the stores and other businesses in town refuse to deal with customers with green skin, and he hears anti-green epithets frequently.
Big Bird is a meth addict whose meth mouth is so bad most of his beak has rotted away. He is HIV positive. He’s been giving hundreds of blowjobs to other characters in the bathroom at a local bus station to get money to buy meth.
A new character, Reverend Ralph, operates a mega-church where he spends endless hours giving sermons decrying abortion, promiscuity, adultery, homosexuality, and all other religions besides his own Protestant Christianity. Rev. Ralph has had an ongoing adulterous affair with Prairie Dawn for many years and steals money from the offering plate to feed and clothe the illegitimate child he had with Prairie a few years ago. Rev. Ralph paid for Prairie’s latest abortion a few months ago. His legitimate daughter, from his first marriage, lives at home and makes living giving speeches advocating abstinence, despite the fact she has never been married yet has three kids by different fathers. Rev. Ralph’s son from his second marriage is gay and maintains a secret relationship with Oscar.
Many of the characters are homeless alcoholics living on the streets because they lost arms or legs due industrial accidents involving dangerous machines that are no longer regulated. Several of them live on the edges of a filthy park with a giant statue of Ronald Reagan as a focal point.
A major recent story line has involved Oscar the Grouch and his efforts to avoid financial ruin due to high default rates in fraudulent mortgages he sold during the recent real estate boom-and-bust. He has been lobbying President Goodhair for a bailout, by promising large donations to Goodhair’s reelection campaign. Will he get the cash? Will he threaten to leave the country if he can’t keep his incredibly large performance bonus? Will President Goodhair get reelected?
All in all, much better than that liberal Sesame Street, don’t you think?...
I think it made sense to change the set since from what I hear (I’ve only been to post-revitalization NYC so I can’t know for sure), NYC really *does* look much cleaner today than in the 70s.
At its best, libertarianism is just re-branded 18th and 19th Century “classical” (or whiggish) liberalism, and so is an outdated ideology that was best suited for pre-industrial or early industrial times, when large multinational corporations and monopoly capitalism did not exist. Sure, at that time, private business wasn’t much of a threat to freedom since it consisted almost entirely of small local mom-and-pop organizations. But following that ideology today makes about as much sense as advocating absolute monarchy, or fuedalism. Of course at it’s worst libertarian is just something people to ashamed to admit they are Republicans call themselves (similar to “tea party”). It is to Republocanism what KFC is to Kentucky Fried Chicken.
My comment @ 43 was a general one, not directed at you, Anonymouse. God, aren’t you full of yourself…oh, yeah, libertarian. Never mind.
I am well aware of the viewpoint of the creaters of SS, despite having been in preschool when it came out. It is just amazing that the supposed “self-reliance” folks are the ones against the means to get there. My pont separate from that, was that any television show that actually has both entertainment and education while not boring/frustrating the SAHP or other caregiver is considered subversive lefty, commie, dirty hippy stuff. So, teaching any kid about shapes, colors, letters of the alphabet or numbers is now looked on as being “left” or “liberal”, as is supporting public education.
Central and S American versions and the Canadian version in French used to be pretty interesting for their quick peek at early childhood education/entertainment in those places.
Hannit & company are right. How America longs for the unambiguous messaging of 1980s cartoons like He-Man.
http://www.maxtoons.com/heman13.jpg
So, teaching any kid about shapes, colors, letters of the alphabet or numbers is now looked on as being “left” or “liberal”, as is supporting public education.
All time that could be spent teaching kids that evolution and global warming are liberal lies.
I enjoy how libertarians seem to think that totalitarian socialism (the regimes of Mao, Stalin etc.) is the only kind that exists. Apparently Democratic Socialism (that many Northern European countries are heading towards) inevitably turns into the former, and Anarchist Socialism (also known as Libertarian Socialism, before the first word was robbed by people who would probably think the phrase is an oxymoron) just simply doesn’t exist.
I can speak for me and people who I know and read who do not fit these molds;
Here’s the problem, Anonymouse: nobody thinks they fit these molds. So you can speak for people who think they don’t fit those molds. But that’s everyone, again. And now we’re back where we started.
@71:
I’m pretty much a socialist, but in fairness, there aren’t really any actual, convincing historical instances of socialism working out in practice. The reason Democratic Socialism a la Northern Europe isn’t going to turn into Soviet Russia is because it’s a lot more likely to swing back toward capitalism. So far the cycle seems to be, nationalize a bunch of stuff, get tired of people whining about taxes, privatize it again. And then in the midst of the current economic crisis, a bunch of European economic leaders who should know better suddenly seem to be turning into Austrian School conservatives.
My point being I’m not sure Northern Europe is a great example of the success of socialism.
Triplanetary:
Best to focus on a system when it works. Nothing runs on autopilot (a fundamental mistake free market fundamentalists always seem to make).
I especially like how the host cut off Miss America 2008 every time she opened her mouth. Silly thing, actually thinking that spouting off Conservative bullshit would make the mens actually listen to her.