Kid Cudi - "Up Up & Away"
Weezer - "I'm Your Daddy"
Jay Farrar and Ben Gibbard - "One Fast Move or I'm Gone"
Them Crooked Vultures - "New Fang"
Why the hairless cat?
I don't think it's a stretch to say that Sesame Streetis one of the most beloved television programs ever produced. For forty years it has entertained and educated untold millions of children, and in multiple generations. I'd wager its favorability ratings (if such a poll were conducted) would eclipse 90%. As such, if you want to take a run at it and convince the public that it's engaged in some sort of nefarious leftist co-opting of the young, you better have an iron-clad case or you're going to come across like a hyper sensitive right-wing nut. Simply put, the evidence falls far short, and thus the Big Hollywood efforts seem more likely to give conservative culture warriors a black eye than achieve any concrete good.
Big Hollywood contributor "Stage Right" got things started when he took umbrage at a skit that's actually a couple of years old in which Oscar the Grouch starts his own news network (GNN - Grouch News Network). During the course of the skit, Oscar ends up reporting too much good news for the taste of one of his audience members (Grungetta the Grouch) and she repeatedly calls in to tell Oscar that she's unhappy with the upbeat programming. Finally, she tells him that she's changing the channel to "Pox News" because its a "trashy news show." Stage Right was upset by this, and then goes on to complain that, in a skit that made fun of news people (using names like "Walter Cranky" and "Dan Rather-not") no Fox personalities were used.
Hot on the heels of that first post, Big Hollywood contributor Adam Baldwin slammed Sesame Street for what looks to be a decades old musical number that has a bunch of kids singing about how, even though they live in different places, have different family arrangements and look different, they are just like "you," the audience member.
Now, today, Stage Right attempts to further his case with a quote from a Sesame Street producer that indicates this upcoming season for the show will introduce "basic ideas of sustainable living" that have a "curriculum about nature and caring for the world."
To the above my response is, "That's it? That's all you've got? With that you want to go out there in public and make a case that Sesame Street is bad for kids? Great. Thanks for handing the left another Tinky-Winky moment that they can beat us over the head with for the next ten years."
Look, you'll get no argument from me if you claim that the creators and producers of Sesame Street are significantly more left-leaning in their ideology than right. You'll also get no argument from me that slipping such ideology into children's education in order to co-opt them is creepy and wrong (I find all of the Obama tribute songs popping up in schools around the country appalling). That being said, I just don't see how any of the examples above constitute the latter.
Sure, we all know the left hates Fox, and the show's writers probably chortled when they found a way to call Pox news trashy (that's likely why the PBS Ombudsman conceded the line probably wasn't a good idea), but to argue that this is some sort of way to indoctrinate pre-schoolers and get them into the liberal camp is simply ridiculous. How many pre-schoolers do you know that are grappling with the choice of where to obtain their news? And as for the lack of Fox personalities being made fun of with altered names, does anyone really think any pre-schooler is going to register the fact that some CBS news anchors were involved but Fox anchors weren't? Also, even accounting for all of the good reporting that it does, Fox News IS trashy.
With regard to the other two bits of evidence offered up by Big Hollywood, both Baldwin and Stage Right are putting things in the show that aren't there. Baldwin sees the "same voice" musical number as a treatise on multi-culturalism and global citizenship, while Stage Right sees the upcoming sustainability messages as likely to be anti-human and advocate radical, leftist behavior modification. In reacting in this way, however, I think both individuals are falling into a classic liberal trap.
Do we really want to argue that kids shouldn't care about nature or the environment? Do we really want to argue that the idea of resource sustainability is bad or that waste is good? Do we really want to argue that there aren't basic elements of shared humanity that can serve to tie people together? I think the left would love if we did, but the fact is that we on the right (including, I would guess, Baldwin and Stage Right) don't really have problems with these fundamental ideals as much as how the left wants to dictate how to act on those ideals. If we conflate these two, however, and treat any advocacy of the fundamental ideals (which is all that Sesame Street is doing) as inherently supportive of only the liberal agenda in acting on those ideals, then aren't we engaged in the same sophistry that the left engages in when it treats any opposition to their agenda as an attack on those fundamental ideals?