Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Fausta's blog brings us this:

The NY Times reports that:

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."...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."

I was just thinking when I wrote the piece about MTV below that the only "sin" that MTV acknowledges is smoking. Have you seen their smug self righteous commercials on it? And now Sesame Street figures the Cookie Monster appearing with a pipe is appalling!

Look, I hate smoking. I have never touched a cigarette. Having parents who smoked their whole lives turned me off even trying it...ever. But I find it ridiculous that that seems to be the only thing those leftwing idiots who control PBS and MTV think harms our children. I would suggest that MTV programing contributes more mental and physical harm to our kids by their encouragement of sexual activity (including explicit condom commercials) than any smoking could ever do.

Once Sesame Street let the likes of Phil Donahue and Whoopi Goldberg host the show, I never let my kids watch it.

If only these producers thought about the content of their shows more than defeating the tobacco companies, we might actually reach our kids to the real dangers of society..and it ain't smoking.