From: "Rich Gauszka" 


"Steve Ewing"  wrote in message
news:op.sppkgyqesagvys{at}news.barkto.com...
> On Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:23:15 -0400, Rich Gauszka 
> wrote:
>
>> IMO their 'health makeover' emasculation  of the
>> Sesame Street Cookie Monster was asinine.
>
> I hadn't heard of this.  Do you have any details?
>
> My wife is a Disney/Pooh fan, with a calendar that every month gives
> another view of the new "wistful" Eeyore.  Perish the thought that any
> child should be exposed to anything gloomy!
>


http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200504220746.asp

Let Cookie Monster Be Cookie Monster Social engineers go way too far.

The producers of Sesame Street have decided that Cookie Monster is gay.

Hold the phone. I'm kidding. But try to hold onto your reaction for a
moment because what they've really done to Cookie Monster is worse, they've
taken away his reason for being.
Since my copy of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is in storage, let me
explain by paraphrasing Hannibal Lecter's famous dialogue with Clarice
Starling in Silence of the Lambs. Imagine Lecter isn't a superhuman
cannibalistic serial killer and that, instead of being a doe-eyed feminist
naif in the FBI, Ms. Starling is a doe-eyed feminist naif at the Children's
Television Workshop.

Lecter: "First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each
particular thing, ask: What is it in itself? What is its nature? What does
he do, this creature you seek?

Starling: He entertains children..

Lecter: "No! That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing
he does? What need does he serve by entertaining children?

Starling: Social acceptance? Personal frustration?

Lecter: No: He craves. That's his nature. And what does he crave? Make an
effort to answer.

Starling: Food?

Lecter: No! He is not a "food monster!" He is a cookie monster!

But not according to the well-meaning social engineers of PBS. After three
decades, they've announced he's not a Cookie Monster at all. In the
interests of teaching kids not to be gluttons, CTW has transformed Cookie
Monster into just another monster who happens to like cookies. His
trademark song, "C is for Cookie" has been changed to "A
Cookie Is a Sometimes Food." And this is a complete and total reversal
of Cookie Monster's ontology, his telos, his raison d'etre, his essential
Cookie-Monster-ness.

If the Cookie Monster is no longer a cookie monster, what is he? Why didn't
they just name him "Phil: The Monster Who Sometimes Likes to Eat a
Cookie"? Conceptually, this is no different than the idiot animal
rights types who want their dogs and cats to be vegans, too. Cookie Monster
cannot help being a Cookie Monster any more than your tabby can stop liking
fish. It is their nature to do so. Why not just declare that Big Bird is
now an elm tree? If the ineffable, inexorable, immutable nature of Cookie
Monster's cookie-eating can be erased for some good cause, why should Big
Bird's birdness be safe?

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5