Sesame Street: Adults Only!

“Sesame Street: Old School” (Volumes 1 and 2) now comes with a warning. “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.” Why you say? According to the New York Times:

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. 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.

Riiiiight. So Bert and Ernie are oppressed, closeted gays, forced to live in a dingy basement apartment. Kermit refuses to be called an amphibian American. Cookie Monster is a cookie away from blindness and foot amputation. Oscar the Grouch is needlessly deprived of Wellbutrin. Stubborn denial of Global Warming and urban pollution! Rows of claustrophobia-inducing brownstones. Modeling of “wrong behavior”, such as smoking, domestic violence . . . having imaginary friends.

I understand that times change, societal values change. But come on now. Sesame Street, at least the ones I remember watching (I was part of the show's target audience the year it began), was about learning to pronounce "C", and the "agua" and "water" meant the same thing, and that two plus two equals four. It was also about getting along with people and our emotions. Life is not always happy. People are sometimes weird or annoying. And today's children's programing is any better at teaching children to be better people?