I was a big "Sesame Street" watcher when I was young. I didn't realize it was so loaded with sociological messages! The early seasons are out on DVD, apparently with a warning that they are not really suitable for...young children!! Liberalism has folded on itself. Puppets with pipes, methane producing cows featured, kids having milk and cookies with adults... Liberal 1969 wasn't quite right, I guess. So liberal 2007 requires a warning label.
The whole matter is discussed in this article in the NYT. It is interesting, silly, tragic, and funny. The last paragraph brings it all together:
People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.
Be nice to your neighbors, eat cookies, read,
Thomas More
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