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Sesame Street DVD Deemed Adult-Only Entertainment
theodp writes "The earliest episodes of Sesame Street are being made available on DVD, but the NYT notes Volumes 1 and 2 carry a rather strange warning: 'These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child.' So why are they unsuitable for toddlers in 2007? Well, in the parody 'Monsterpiece Theater,' Alistair Cookie — played by Cookie Monster — used to appear with a pipe, which he later gobbled. 'That modeled the wrong behavior,' explained a Sesame Street executive producer, adding that 'we might not be able to create a character like Oscar [the Grouch] now.'"
I...um.....*ahem*.......well......ACK!
I honestly do not even know where to begin. My God! This is absolute madness.... political correctness run amok and almost even worse than the religious right's labeling of Bert and Ernie as homosexuals. As one who leans left particularly after the last six years, this sort of thing is a shock back to more centrist practicality and honesty. Shame on the current producers for corrupting the original vision of Sesame Street and creating revisionist history. Oscar the Grouch was *grouchy*, as advertised. So what? Cookie Monster ate the pipe.... so what? It is as it was a vision of the time and a reflection on the changing times of a decade from the 60's to the 70's.
I don't have a problem with things changing, rather I revel in it. However, it makes me sad to see people label what made us who we are unacceptable to todays youth. Parents are far too restrictive with what their kids do, afraid to let them get dirty by playing outside, indoctrinating them with germaphobia from the earliest age, relabeling childrens characters as dangerous pedophiles or attempting to smear them with homosexual labels. The things we used to do as kids would likely get us arrested these days (12 year olds playing with homemade fireworks, carrying shotguns down the street and out to the field to go hunting, swinging from ropes into swimming holes infested with all manner of dangerous wildlife and more).
I don't know what that says of our society but kids watching Sesame Street was just part of the culture and are we now going to be afraid of who we are?
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
From the we-must-censor-the-past department...
What about the guy in 101 Dalmations? He's smoking his pipe in almost every scene. I don't really pay much attention to Disney cartoons, maybe they have released a "special edition" that removes the pipe?
Sesame Street was great for a generation of children to grow up with. It's about a billion times more edifying than that garbage that gets pumped out and served to kids at high volume (and volumes).
This reminds me of Snow Crash (was it snow crash?), where companies are paid big money to edit out smoking in classic films, because it isn't appropriate anymore.
Assholes.
say it again
Life. The observant parent will keep their child shielded until about the age of 47.
No, really: WTF?!?!
proud caffeine whore
They should label _all_ DVDs as adult-only, as the Cookie Monster always was an anxious overeater, and that's also a bad role model, I suppose.
Besides, most monsters were naked, if I remember it correctly. And even if you can forgive that in a furry monster, what about a frog?
I guess we have to look again to Sesame Street, seeing the videos backwards if needed. Probably we'll find much evil lurking there, that probably could go a long way to explain why we are so fucked up as grown-ups. Hmmm... perhaps there is material there for a good lawsuit.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Is why my children were never able to become interested in Sesame Street - while as a 5-year-old in the late-sixties, I loved it.
In subtle ways, it began to condescend and pander. The muppets, in particular, suffered from the loss of Kermit and Henson.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
'These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child.'
No, they aren't. The early episodes, as with the middle episodes and the late episodes and indeed with every episode ever filmed, were intended for children. Yes there were some nods here and there to the adults, but the episodes are intended for children.
I despise smoking - really can't stand it. That said, I've made absolutely no attempt to show non-smoking only films to my kids. I seem to remember Ghostbusters for example, has Ray dropping a cigarette out of his mouth at the sight of a ghost and our kids love Ghostbusters.
I love the standards at work - apparently lying is fine. Just not smoking a comedy pipe.
Cheers,
Ian
"We might not be able to create a character like Oscar [the Grouch] now." Just when we need him most, too.
These cartoons were fine when we were kids and we turned as normal as our parents, if not moreso. Does anyone else think the execs are running out of things to do with the writers strike in effect?
Why is it that shows like Power Rangers are acceptable for slightly older kids, then? They clearly demonstrate an approach to the world seems destined to create a legion of Stormtroopers for Darth Vader's next galactic conquest, where head-to-toe uniforms obscure all trace of personality and violence succeeds above all else. A (very) weak argument could be made that violent kids' shows are aimed at a more mature audience, but many six and seven year olds have pre-school brothers and sisters who are exposed to this stuff "accidentally."
Wait.. I watched these episodes when I was a child.. I now vividly recall cookie monster smoking that pipe... and many many years later, I now smoke myself. Obviously there were absolutely no other external influenced in my life to cause me to start smoking other than Cookie Monster!! So now when I get lung cancer, it's not the tobacco industry's fault. It's Sesame Street! *sniff sniff* Is that class action law suit I smell?
-- Never monkey with another monkey's monkey.
... I will now smoke an entire pipe full of Nat Sherman's in a preschool class just to spite these dickfucks. At least until the cops arrive.
And I don't even smoke.
Who else will sponsor a Bad Uncle event?
I'm gonna start my own kid's show, Darwin Street. It will feature lots of colorful characters doing dangerous, emulatable things. If your kid kills himself doing something he saw on the show, we didn't need him in the gene pool anyway. Better yet, video tape whatever your kid did to off himself and you might win something in our sister show, America's Funniest Home Fatalities.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Values have changed. Cartoons from the 1930's to the 1960's are hard to find in their original incarnations because of violence and racial insensitivity.
It's only a matter of time before the Cookie Monster becomes the Carrot Stick and Broccoli Floret Monster, Big Bird becomes Avian American of Special Stature, and Oscar the Grouch becomes Differently Tempered Oscar with Alternate Housing Preferences. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
In history, the winners get to write the history books. This is usually applied to military winners, but since war is so un-PC these days, it's the cultural war winners who write the books. Right now the winners are the PC nanny-staters who, in spite of their message of tolerance, are some of the most intolerant people on earth for those buck their orthodoxy.
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
It would appear that this so-called matter of "political correctness" forces upon us a sense of moral incorrectness, and an overall lack of common sense.
Kids survived for years, if not decades, watching this show. Last time I checked, most of them turned out fine. Are we trying to accelerate the degradation of society and free speech/expression as we know it?
It seems creators of these shows spend more time shoving commercials and their political agendas down the throats of developing minds than they do teaching any useful skills or information.
When I was a kid, me and all the kids I knew were raised by loving parents. It seems these days parents are too exhausted from the 60 hour weeks just trying to keep up with ever-increasing expenses, and as a result their children are drugged up and raised by soulless marketing companies via the idiot tube.
Just my 2c.
Is this a news report or a trailer for a motion picture?
Sesame Street? I give the kids in my life copies of Peewee's Playhouse. You want adult content? Innuendo? Sexuality? You got it! Best kid's show ever made.
Problem is that people forget that kids are actually pretty damned intelligent. Give them credit for smarts.
Three Squirrels
There is nothing wrong with letting your kids see inappropriate behavior (eg. smoking or living in garbage cans), so long as they know not to do it themselves. They get to know what is right and wrong by internalizing a set of "values". They won't build up these values without some exposure. They also need to be able to talk about stuff too.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
And the pussification of America continues.
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
If we don't force our kids to watch Bert and Ernie engaged in hard core homosexual sex acts then the terrorists will win.
I heard the Count is a meth addict.
Am I to understand that Cookie Monster is no longer a character on Sesame Street? He was the best one! If that's true, I'm moving to Cuba -- at least they're more upfront about their mind control.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
Accidents happen. With 300 million people in America, a 1 in 1 million chance hits 300 people a year. Each year a few children tragically drown in pools, so we've scared parents about pools, and criminalized pools (in terms of liability) without fences and fences around fences. Every child's death is a tragedy, but locking up parents that make decisions that we don't like has done far more damage than good.
Parents told that a small spanking is child abuse. Children with working single mothers going home to an empty house is an unfortunately economic reality, but if some accident happens, we arrest the parent for child endangerment.
Bad things can happen, but the modern small family size combined with an overzealous judiciary and Departments of Child Services has resulted where we want to criminalize anything going wrong.
Instead of blaming parents, look at a legal culture that expects nothing bad to happen to a child and determines a person's entire worth on the success of their children. When families with children had 4-5 children, you expected most to come out alright but occasionally something bad happens. In families of 1-2 children, anything bad is a catastrophe.
Far more harm is being done to children by overprotection than the risks of life. But its hard to blame parents when if they get hit with the 1 in a million accident (that affects dozens of children a year), they can go to jail and have their other children taken away from them.
Let's see, woman that don't breastfeed are told that they endanger their children. Women that do may be criminally charged if they don't follow the social standard in the US... A poor woman was jailed because she couldn't see a Doctor and didn't realize that the child was malnourished from breast-feeding (mathematically rare, but real and if you criminalize 2% of all women)... The breast-feeding ones make the headlines, but the push towards criminalizing parents if kids do anything wrong, including pranks and petty vandalism add up. It's hard to be a parent, because your child is a natural explorer and risk taker, and you normally just have to make sure no unreasonable danger is present. However, if a child falls and hurts himself, you can be sure that child services will show up and decide that anything you failed to do to "child-proof" your home (as if children aren't a natural part of the home) is criminal neglect, it's hard to put the fault entirely on parents.
Being a parent in today's age is really tough, because in the back of your mind IS busybodies that will decide that you are a negligent parent for letting your child see something that is a natural part of life. Parents have been condemned/charged if the child sees them engage in sexual acts, while co-sleeping is a natural if unpopular approach to parenting. These choices are all reasonable, whether I would make them for my child or not, but the criminalization of anything outside the norm for parenting takes some of the fun out of it.
It's not the parents... it's the system of do-gooders that make life hell on parents.
Wikipedia states that they cut about a minute out of the "Big Bird in China" DVD where Big Bird goes around asking if anyone speaks American...
Monstar L
I guess kids can't handle the idea that something is imaginary or unrealistic, even though we encourage them to use and develop their imagination. Good idea, let's confuse them and let's not make any sense ourselves! Let's taboo things and hope they won't be drawn to them, that's worked in the past! I can see we're really evolving here as a society... and to think I was worried!
Twinstiq, game news
Cookie Monster ate the pipe!! I totally forgot about that.. Fucking funny shit. Sesame Street is totally awesome.
--- We need more Ron Paul!
Right now the winners are the PC nanny-staters
"PC nanny staters" is usually a codeword used by the American right to complain about the American left.
But this isn't a left-vs-right issue. The right wing in the US has its very own "political correctness" (namely, conformance with Christian ideals) and its very own "nanny state" policies (ranging from school prayer to extrajudicial renditions).
So, if you want to contribute to this debate, why don't you start by avoiding slogans created by one party to smear the other one? Both the Democrats and the Republicans are to blame for this bullshit.
The trouble is, regardless of what children's program you decide to allow your children to watch, you need to be there with them anyway. This statement has been made time and time again but no one seems to listen. I always thought of shows like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Mr.Wizard, Eureka's Castle, Pinwheel, Square One, The Electric Company, and a host of others as something that I could watch with my parents when I was younger. Honestly, they enjoyed it too because it gave us something to do as a family. The television is not a damn babysitter for chrissake!
Furthermore, truth is truth. The lessons taught by Sesame Street almost four decades ago still ring true today. Counting from one to ten, the alphabet, and Grover's spatial relations (near, far) aren't dated, they're classic. This is yet another example of individuals not wanting to take responsibility for their own actions and leaving it up to the government or similar-level authorities to decide how we should live life. And they have. So what if Cookie Monster had a pipe? Didn't look like he was actually smoking it. Kids knew better in my day anyway. Smoking is bad. Our parents only had to say it once and we listened--mostly because if they caught you smoking you got the crap beaten out of you and you didn't do it. It wasn't fucking abuse...it was discipline! That's not a dirty word! I should also point out that we were smart enough back then to know you couldn't eat a pipe, drop an anvil on someone's head and have them...you know...not die, or paint a picture of a tunnel on a rock and drive through it. Children are smarter than you think...and those very few who would perform these actions are merely subject to Darwin's Law.
If I (or anyone) had been told fifteen or more years ago what society was going to be like today, I do believe it would be scarier than anything the Cold War threw at us as we've gradually slid down the slippery slope of political correctness into an abysmal darkness where no longer can anyone do anything without worrying how it affects just one (or few) individual(s) thoughts, feelings, or condition.
I hate what our society has become. Take some damned responsibility (you lazy-ass fucktards) before 1984 really does arrive!
"I don't see any kids playing in the streets, ever, republican or otherwise. What are the causes behind this?"
Video games, every kid having their own computer, dvd, etc. Being "sent to your room" is no longer punishment - the real task is to get them to come out except for meals.
Sissyfication of America... I mean, c'mon folks, there's too much Political Correctness in this world. I think irony, sarcasm, a bit of rough play is not bad.
In the UK and some states the U.S. children are not allowed to play tag in school grounds anymore. Yesterday we took our toddler to the park and under the slide and swings there are rubber floors. AS I said to the in-laws, 40 years ago I had no problems falling on the ground and finding my knee scratched.
We didn't die because of those Sesame St episodes, did we?
What a bunch of crap...
Protect the children from everything, then send them to Iraq to die.
:).
Sounds like a plan to me
I found a web site with detailed photos of changes done to Richard Scary illustrated children's books. It was fairly minor, but I consider it political correctness run amok in most instances (changes to gender roles, elimination of smoking, etc).
I've made an effort to find used children's books where I can, particularly pre-1970s, as these are unlikely to have been edited and also tend to show a wider range of behaviors and experiences (such as shooting & hunting and other "dangerous" behavior).
One of the few bright spots have been the original Curious George books; we've bought them new and they still show George and/or the Man in The Yellow Hat smoking a pipe. We've bought some of the new ones illustrated in the style of curious George and the only thing that seems to be altered are more non-white characters, which occasionally seem out of place in an apparently 1940s America.
Although in "Curious George at the Baseball Game" there's what I presume is an unintentionally ironic bit of multiculturalism -- George wreaks havoc at a ballgame and gets in trouble with a TV camera woman. She chases him and he hides, and then finds a lost little black boy. The TV camera woman catches them and then realizes the boy is lost and puts their images on the Jumbotron.
The irony is in the caption on the Jumbotron reads "IS THIS YOU BOY OR YOUR MONKEY?", with both George and the boy on the screen. A racist wouldn't have written it better on purpose.
Part of me just died a little.
This Parking Lot is Full comic seems quite appropreate given the subject matter.
For those who haven't seen it before, The Parking Lot is Full is a classic work of black humor.
I wonder if they included the "H is for Homicide" skit from Family Guy?
"Three great powers rule the world: greed, fear, and stupidity." -- Mark Twain.
I will add that the bad decisions of stupid people have a directly harmful impact on everyone around them (stupid or otherwise). So, I pass judgment on the stupid, and offer then little sympathy.
One last point: simply believing one's self to be intelligent doesn't make one intelligent. Active and ongoing mental exercise, and study, make one intelligent. Unfortunately, these things are not popular in our culture.
... the world becomes dumber and dumber as time goes by. Buncha brainturds.
But then released yet another version where they removed the shotgun and replaced it with a flashlight.
...and so, Romeo and Juliet lived happily ever after.
Hey, if they can do it to H.C. Andersen and the Grimm Brothers, they can do it to Shakespeare...
"Okay. Tell me which letter of the alphabet you want me to fire."
They got the message, and everyone's favorite slum got a reprieve.
Frankly, I'm glad (and a little surprised) that they just didn't get rid of those old skits. A lot has changed since they were first filmed.
Many comments in this thread are complaining about how their children cannot now watch Sesame Street. Why not? You can show the video to your children if you wish. Perhaps the restrictions will prevent your children from personally buying the DVD, but there is nothing to stop you from buying it and letting them watch it - or is there? Have American rules now become so petty that someone can dictate how you bring up your own children? I think that if this changes anything its because nobody has the balls to make a choice regarding how they bring up their children. Sesame Street didn't harm you and all you have to do is now make a decision for yourself and get on with your life.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
I recently checked "The best of the electric company" out of my local library, and it had two scenes that made me say "wow, that would never get made today":
1) Bill Cosby smoking a (real! lit!) cigar. I believe it was during a game show loosely based on You Bet Your Life.
2) Morgan Freeman talking about how bad he needed a cigarette.
Seriously, what this "warning label" is really doing is sending a message to the millions of kids-now-adults who grew up with Sesame Street in the 70s: "we have analyzed what this stuff did to you and it ain't pretty." (even if they didn't do the analysis -- which I doubt they did -- that's still the undertone). Gee, thanks! On that note, I can say that gobbling tobacco pipes is really not as uncomfortable as it looks. This generation's award-winning children's programming is the next's NC-17 controversy.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
This submission reminded me of an old Canadian public service announcement:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=EouPjJLub2c
Oh, and don't forget to watch this one
years ago on this once wonderful show, I'm 43 and I can remember watching this with my little sister and brother but today the show seem more like an eduction in double speak and lowest common denominator then the three R's. It's a shame this crap has crept into every kids show on the air and we gave up last month. I'm now saving $60.00 buckas a month and we rent or purchase what we want the kids to watch. Your loss PBS, ABC, NBC, CBS. My only regret is loosing Discovery and TLC.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
I sort of like the idea that great people require "interesting upbringings" and the heavily filtered world we give to kids these days will just make more sheeple. You really do need to teach your kids more then to read, write and simple math. Much of the old stories (brothers grim and other fables) had violence, death, and loss. I think it might scare your children but when they grow up they need to deal with violence, death and loss. Thus they need soem grounding in how to deal with these. The vacuous entertainment they are presented is just too empty.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
That is just totally stupid.
So, I have to wade through this PC crap while my 9 year old daughter can't search the net without hitting a pornographic site once a day? WTF?
So I have to watch out for Sesame Street, but things like "Ed, Edd and Eddie", "Power Rangers" and "The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy" are OK?
Our society is so twisted now. We have such extreme systems to rate and protect children for movies, books, video games and music, but the real entertainment engine they use, the net, is wide open. Fascinating.
seig hail political correctness!
It's about time someone did something to fight the pipe-eating epidemic among today's youth. Think of the children!
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
These comments about the role of the state are totally off base. First of all, there is no government ratings system in the United States. All media ratings are voluntarily created by corporate industry groups, particularly the MPAA. If they were done by the government, they would be undone in the courts because there is no legal basis for government censorship of the media under the US Constitution. The reason we have de-facto censorship in the United States is because it was slipped in through the private sector much as we're seeing the attempts to do with the net in the efforts to politicize net-neutrality.
More importantly though, the real censorship comes from the role of advertising. If advertisers fund the media, then they inherently gain control over the content. Sesame Street is a great example because it was financed by the publicly funded Public Broadcast System rather than through advertising. Now that PBS has been neutered to the point that it plays no significant role in children's programming and a few decades have gone by we can see that in retrospect those works which were publicly funded appear over-the-top compared to what advertiser sponsored media will tolerate.
Hola, I don't believe the companies editing out smoking was in there, but it's been awhile since I've read it. There actually are companies in the real world making money from religious nuts by editing out profanity and sex but I haven't heard of anything for smoking. Assholes. Amen, brother!
A whopping 120 characters to take your mind off topic. Tested in MS Word.
I'm impressed to see someone get the point beyond the usual leftwing-rightwing dick woggling. Congratulations... regardless your political views, you have a valid point. Good job with it.
I say this having been a guy who went through the whole attempted feminization/mental castration that the school systems and modern PC world puts boys through. I also say it as someone who made it out (mostly) undamaged by their attempts. I was done with "schooling" by 15 and could've spent the next few years learning to run my parents' business, without missing 90% of the work day wasting away in a place where nothing new was taught or learned. Instead, I was forcefully kept in school because there wasn't enough demand for college level classes and my school had "no earlier than senior year" early graduation policy. While I was there I got to watch a bunch of hypocritical old people (henceforth known as "adults") tell a bunch of bored to death young adults/aka teenagers (henceforth known as "prisoners") how to live, how to think (or rather how not to ask questions that upset the status quo) and to continuously obey the clock, obey the authorities and beg for acceptance, forgiveness and permission to go shit and pee. (I more than once walked out of class to go pee when permission wasn't given. Most of my "compatriots" or "peers" didn't even have the balls to say it out loud... and probably damaged their bladders waiting for an hour to take a piss... but that isn't my problem, now is it? I set the example, they didn't follow it, too bad for them.)
The results are visible today. Those who toed the line and "grew up" are now raising a generation of even WEAKER offspring.
There is an upside. Unfortunately it isn't for those LIVING in the "West" it is for those looking to invade or conquer the "West".
If you are an enemy of the West, all you have to do is wait one more generation, when those who were tough have all died of old age, then come in and conquer the place with Super Soakers and BB guns. Why fight a bloody conflict with today's generation, when you can come in when their kids are grown up, and fight a group of castrated she-men and their wives... neither of which will put up more of a fight than your average comatose TV-zombie.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
Stevie Wonder's performance of Superstition on Sesame Street kicks major ass.
Seems like those days are gone though. I mean, what the hell is wrong with introducing kids to really good music? At nearly 7 minutes, this has to be a Sesame Street record.
Kids do appreciate "adult" music. I was playing Portishead in the car yesterday, and my five year old made me shush so she could listen to Glory Box. And she also likes Daft Punk and Datarock.
Fuck all those "kids songs with stupid lyrics" ;-)
-- Trinity in high heels carrying a whip: The donimatrix - there is no spoonerism
It's like "Don't use a curling iron and fall asleep", "keep children out of large buckets", "Warning : these peanuts were made in a factory that processes nuts".
It's not meant to be taken seriously except by courts. I smell lawyers at work here rather than any sane decision.
Yes, any biological organism that reproduces is a parent, your argument is silly because it ignores the realities of parenting.
Parenting a toddler is physically exhausting, but generally involved very few decision if the system wasn't involved.
To suggest that the current President and First lady, or the former President and first lady, with 2 adult children or one high school aged child (when they entered office) are indicative of parents of small children (which is what the article was discussing) is absurd. The same is true of most of Congress, state legislatures, and governor's mansions.
People with power, whether they are parents or not, and most are, are generally 40-50, with their youngest child, often a single child or the younger of two, in their late teens to mid-twenties are NOT indicative of people with small children up to age 5, meaning people from the ages of 18 to 35.
The fact is, the baby boomers have pulled every ladder up behind them as they have gotten older. They have made parenting impossible... modern car seats are total disasters because they have to deal with the dangerous cars we've created... Air bags are nice tools for adults, but a disaster for small children. When I was a child I rode in the front seat next to my mother, because car seats could go in the front seat. If I dropped something, my mom could pick it up. My son can't ride in the front seat, so if he drops something, he screams because my wife can't grab something off the floor and hand it to him because he's in the back seat.
However, the baby boomers, when they had small children, had cars built around their needs. As they got older, not only did the market accommodate their new needs (no small children, teenage drivers), but the government changed regulations that made cars safer for older "parents" at the expense of younger parents. People decry the explosion of SUVs, but when you can't fit more than two car seats in the back, because they are no longer safe in the middle seat, and cars with side impact air bags require children up to age five to be in booster seats, what does a young family do? Once you have two kids, if you drive a sedan, you can't transport a friend's child (common things when I was a kid), so you need a mini-van or an SUV to have sufficient seating. If you have a third kid, you can't transport them without a mini-van. My wife carpools to work with a friend, and they pop the two kids into car seats in the back seats. Now both expecting child two, they either have to stop carpooling, or get mini-vans, because cars can't support three children, let alone four.
If you think that the powers that be with one or two children in private school HAVE ANY UNDERSTANDING what a typical family with 2-4 young children go through is absurd, but to say that they are the same because they are parents suggests that President Bush and I have a lot in common because we are both white males, it's silly.
Everyone is a parent or a biological dead-end, roping them all together as those a family with 3 small children HAS ANYTHING IN COMMON with a family with two teenage children (and 15 more years of raises and wealth accumulation behind them) is absurd. The system is run by people with teenage children terrified that anything will happen to them because they only have one or two kids and can't have more. The system is run on top of people with small children that hope nothing goes wrong but lack the resources to do anything about it.
To illustrate the point, consider the following question: If you could guarantee your children would survive to 30, but they would drop 20 IQ points and be financially dependent on your forever, if you are in your 40s and have two teenage children, you'd agree and say that it's because you'd love your children. If you ask a 25 year old couple struggling with the bills with two children and deciding on a third if they'd make that change to avoid a 5% chance of losing a child by 18, you might get a different answer. I love my son to
Just called my old foster mom, to ask her about Sesame Street. She said it thrilled her first generation of foster kids, including me, but that she could never get any kid born after 1980 interested in watching.
When I asked her about the viewing habits of the kids she has now, she told me that her husband threw out their last TV set, back in 1990, after one of her crack babies hurled something at the TV screen and broke it. They decided not to replace the broken TV. I tried to get her to confirm for the record that it was Barney the purple dinosaur's influence that pushed that crack baby over the edge, but she denies that this part of the story is true.
This is a little off topic, but your post kind of points out the current problem of parents having punishments that are not punishments. It is now considered proper parenting to no longer teach children right from wrong. Now your only supposed to teach your kid right, and hope that they are never faced with wrong. The epitome of this is the "Time Out". Instead of telling the kid that they are in trouble and to go stand in a corner, or giving them a quick spanking, the parents have a "Time Out". You know like in football, or other games. It's not that your in trouble. It's just that we need to pause the game to gather ourselves back up. So, lets spend a few minutes sitting on this pretty little park bench we bought that has "Time Out" engraved in it. Weee!!!
...on the subversive moral instruction of Sesame Street
America: stick a fork in her - she's done.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I don't really get what's so "liberal" about this kind of inane overprotection of children from images of real adults. Sesame Street was a completely liberal invention: government TV to help raise children by presenting a friendly urban street with diverse, idiosyncratic neighbors. Dehumanizing it and refusing to trust parents to help their children interpret the images is pretty weird, but it's not "liberal".
--
make install -not war
I see a lot of this revisionism as pandering to the religious right, and conservatives in general.
Actually no. The religious right is against things they think are wrong. No religion suggests grouchiness is wrong. Also, no mainstream Christian religions have a prohibition on pipe-smoking.
The anti-smoking nazis are almost universally leftists.
They want to control your behavior. They know better than you so they will make your life choices for you. They know what your money should be spent on, so they'll take it from you. They know how every industry should be run, so they regulate it.
They know how every child should be raised, so they're there with bureaucrats to "help" it be done right. Home visits, "soft" censorship of TV, mandatory government education with all alternatives discouraged, textbooks scoured of anything that any interest group could possibly object to, prohibitions on games of "tag" and other "violent" games, and the sexual-harassment panda are all tools their toolbox.
Conservatives support individual freedom and limited government in general. The "religious right" wants to live their lives without having to bow to the totalitarian left's new government rules.
There may have been a time when the "religious right" wanted more than that, but that was before leftists gained control of every institution in society: government, education, media, non-profits, courtrooms, and increasingly corporations and churches. Now folks on the "religious right" are struggling to keep themselves from being made second-class citizens in the new big-government leftist "utopia".
His speech on political correctness, delivered 16 February 1999, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall, Harvard University Law School:
http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/charltonhestonculturalwar.htm
*I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said, "pretends to be people." There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best. There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm the guy.
As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: if my Creator gave me the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own sense of liberty, your own freedom of thought, your own compass for what is right.*
Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure."
Those words are true again. I believe that we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart. I'm sure you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you, the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the miracle that it is.
Let me back up a little. About a year or two ago, I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms of American citizens. I ran for office. I was elected, and now I serve. I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know, I'm pretty old, but I sure Lord ain't senile.
As I've stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are -- are not the only issue. No, it's much, much bigger than that. I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain accepted thoughts and speech are mandated.
For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- and long before Hollywood found it acceptable, I may say. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.
I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life -- throughout my whole career. But when I told an audience that gay rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was called a homophobe.
I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out the innocent Jews and singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.
Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural persecution I'm talking about, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.
From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that. You are using language not authorized for public consumption."
But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness, we'd still be King George's boys -- subjects bound to the British crown.
In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that
"blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly twisted on us --
i shouldn't be surprised that so many comments are taking the high-horse of the "pussification" of america. after-all its an easy one to take. censorship must be bad. those pansies at Sesame Street are just scared of lawsuits, right? Wrong. Placing a label on a DVD that some would take (rightly so) at first glance as a kids show is responsible action if that kids show has actors (including puppets) modeling behavior that you might not want your kids to engage in. This stuff was shot almost 40 years ago. Just because "My mom smoked and drank while she was pregnant and we never sat in a car seat and we shot each other in the head with BB guns...etc" doesn't mean that times have changed and that we haven't learned anything. The pithy pot-shots at PBS are misplaced. The story here is that we have learned a lot in 40 years about how children, especially young children learn and model behavior. And yes, parents are key. So quit dogging on someone for doing something right. And in case you are wondering, I don't let my kids watch ANY TV. I do, however let them watch an occasional movie and i appreciate knowing what it contains first. I also watch what they eat, read them books at night and am teaching my oldest (he's 2 and a half) to build computers. So please, cut the folks at PBS a break. Sesame Street today is a great show and is really a good influence for kids. And before you start spouting off about how kids should toughen up, try having some yourself, and then let me know how much you want them to smoke and drink and drive fast cars. there are plenty of better ways to learn that stuff than from the TV - my kids uncle comes to mind....
I started smoking pipe tobacco when I was 24 (2 yrs ago). I had completely forgotten about that Sesame Street bit where Cookie Monster ate the pipe. I had wondered all along why I was tempted to eat my pipes after finishing a bowl, turns out it was Sesame Street's fault. Damn you Sesame Street!
why today's Sesame Street just doesn't seem to be quite the show I remembered growing up. I mean, I can fully understand why those old Loony Tunes cartoons from the 40's and 50's aren't shown anymore, but this was a freaking kid's show! Also, isn't it about time for the people who grew up watching Sesame Street to be assuming rolls of power in our society? I mean, who grows up and decides that all those happy memories aren't appropriate for today's youth? Someone who didn't like the show, that's who.
Anyway, here's a quick fix if you need it: the Yip Yip aliens. I'm guessing these guys probably don't make the grade anymore either...
There is simply too much glass..
I never got into Sesame Street, I preferred SCTV's Philosophy Street instead. Hi Mr. Willis! My mum sent me out for some materialism.
Hehe. It's interesting you should pick that example. Here's one person's interpretation, which pretty much matches what went through my mind when I reread it as an adult:
Now don't go criticizing this (or me) without reading context, which makes the whole thing a lot more interesting. Here, for comparison, is that same person's precis of the story itself:
Now go take another look at Babar.
That Babar link explains that the children surveyed don't care about whatever deeper significance may or may not be linking in the tales - they simply enjoy the stories. Scholarship has moved a long way from the time when it was believed that the messages people take away from a story are the exact same ones that we put in. It's a pity so many people still think that other people are mindless robots and run around trying to protect children from Alistair Cookie. Instead of protecting them from being checked in and out of the TV as though it were a daycare, and a society that in so many ways encourages this kind of parenting and makes it difficult to do otherwise.
Whether you want to accept it or not, it's the very 'left-leaning' that produces concepts like this. I'm not defending 'right-leaning', I'm just saying that this comes from certain left-leaning ideas.
can't hide in trash cans, can't eat food? that's a leftists doing. the right only has a problem with bert and ernie being gay.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
People to this day still puzzle over the blood splatter and smoke coming from the end of the flashlight.
It's the price of living in a litigious and SAFE society.
Americans appear to be willing to achieve supreme safety at any cost, be it from their wallets, liberty, privacy, freedom, respect, dignity etc.
Makes sense... in Korea, only old people watch Sesame Street.
Read here:
http://www.firstthings.com/
Furthermore, I tend to believe that a lot of it is deliberately done so as to keep today's children in a perpetual state of stupidity. Parents just want to sit kids down in front of the television while they go out and live their own broken lives. Meanwhile, the television is made to keep children from ever becoming a threat later in life. Beat them with mindlessness now and they'll have no want for intelligent entertainment further down the road. People that don't think offer no resistance to the status quo, and those in power like it that way.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
I remember reading about the beginning of the airing of Sesame Street in Germany in 1972, and how there were complaints about how bad a role model Oscar living in a trash can is for children. Something like that might be suitable for the USA (back then and sometimes even today the narrow-minded's scapegoat for horrible developments in society), but not in good old clean Germany.
... repeating ...
Sigh. History
On the upside, it will probably be fine 35 years from now.
I am about as anti-PC as the next guy, but....
The intro scene would NEVER be allowed on TV today. A young girl (let's say 5 years old) walks home from school alone. She is then approached by a strange man who wants to take her somewhere..
In our society this is the exact OPPOSITE Behavior we would our daughters or sons to follow.
The 60's and 70's were very different than today. People should watch this with thier kids and explain why the behaviors exhibited don't apply today.
Dave
The god damn hippies and wierdos who were my teachers in my early years and who kept banging the drum that humanity was going to destroy the planet through pollution and nuclear war and who felt that it was OK to experiment on us kids with every new educational theory that came along did a lot more damage to my young psyche than PBS ever did. Which is why I can now wish that these people would all get cancer of the ass and die a horrible death. Sesame Street would NOT have been OK with me wishing that on someone. So I guess while they were not harmful, their message of peace and learning for the fun of it didn't take very well, either.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I'm sorry, I have much less problem with Oscar than I do with Elmo. My 3 year old is not allowed to watch modern Sesame Street. He is allowed to watch old ones.
Not only do I find the new ones much more frenetic, I have no desire to have my child think that acting like Elmo is acceptable behaviour.
What is the "wrong behavior" that it is modeling - that you shouldn't EAT PIPES?? Oh but I guess sitting down and woffing back 30 -40 cookies at one sitting is OK behavior? No wonder America is so obese.
Remember when Mr. Potato Head came with a pipe? I used to use that pipe and pretend I was Popeye. Oh wait, Popeye can't have a pipe anymore either.
Megatron used to transform into a gun, too. There's all sorts of old toys "back then" that would be recalled today due to our hypersensitivity.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
Not if the game involves any degree of luck. Sure this does not apply to chess, but it surely would apply to backgammon -- nobody wins them all, no matter how good they are, and it happens quite frequently that someone makes the best possible decision at every point in the game, and still loses. This deserves a "Good Game" -- it acknowledges that there were some things that were out of the player's control that ultimately determined the outcome. Poker of course is particularly prone to this -- all those who play it know exactly what you mean if you say "I was good until the river." Telling someone "Good Game" after he just lost his entire chip stack to a 200:1 runner-runner suckout is hardly condescending.
Most games, including athletic competitions, involve some degree of luck. Environmental variables cannot be controlled, and some of them are not even visible to the players. You throw or kick the ball trusting that the wind will be blowing with the same speed and direction throughout that ball's flight -- what else can you do? When a sudden gust of wind pushes a kick two feet to the right of the upright and you miss the game-winning field goal, that's luck coming into play (unless you're indoors of course). This is why there is a "good" end of the field and a "bad" end to be kicking toward at any point in the game. The difference may not always be large, but it is there, and this is why teams switch sides at various points in the game.
Tennis is likewise prone to the vagaries of shifting and swirling wind, and also to patterns of light and shadow if played by natural light. Baseball has the same issues. Golf is not so prone to tricks of the light, but is very vulnerable to wind and rain -- and yesterday's weather often impacts the condition of the course even though it has changed since. There are no grounds crews to roll out tarps when the rain comes.
"Good Game" is a simple acknowledgment that, had a few variables been changed, the outcome of the contest may well have been different.
Mal-2
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Talk about adult only. Check out the first search result: http://www.sesameworkshop.org/search/index.new.php?q=cookie+monster
chika...chika..pow..woww.... This episode featuring: How big bird get his groove on
Good Sig. I dig.
" What luck for rulers that men do not think" - Adolf Hitler
In my Sesame street book from the 70's the streets are covered with Graffitti... much of which seems apparently by and about the characters... is this the real reason? I dont remember if the live show when it first came out was the same..
Is it still piracy if it's not available in the US? If it was, I'd buy it, so...
I don't know about piracy, but it would still be copyright infringement. If a copyright holder doesn't want to make a film available in the US, that's their right.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjJsitebBe0
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P is for penis, that's good enough for me!
P is for penis, that's good enough for me!
P is for penis, that's good enough for me!
Penis, penis, penis starts with P!
anyone remember that skit? i loved that one..
do you think that skit would be played now with all the terroism bullshit.. kids are missing the best, most creative sesame streets. I will be buying these DVDs as an adult to relive the memories.
I didn't RTFA, but I'd wager that the main reason this is marketed to the "adult" class of consumers and not "parents" (I realize the latter is usually a subclass of the former) is because a parent looking for an educational DVD will be disappointed in early seasons of Sesame Street. Young children, accustomed to the superior production values of the current PBS Kids shows (some are quite good - Curious George, for example) might find the badly aging episodes dull, and parents might find the content infantile.
This is a way for public television to make money from the School House Rock set, not the young families graduating from Baby Einstein.
North American parents... Or maybe mostly the new christian attitudes. THINK LIKE THE CHINESE COMMIES!
Censorship and Propaganda! Censorship and Propaganda! Censorship and Propaganda!
Seriously tho, the right way to things is literally Educate and actually raise the children!
Tell them right from wrong! Do parenting! And most of all Educate!!! Censorship and Propaganda
is not the way. Because when they do find out, it wont be from you, and it will probably be
spun in a positive way...
"Cigs? what are those? get rid of stress? get me more popular? No negative side effects! Ok!
I've been taught to listen to whatever I get fed! Ok hook me up with Weed!"
Yea.... great....
I commend PBS for both being able to gracefully admit that they were wrong.
They're creating children's television. There isn't room for the historical nuance that we once thought of tobacco as OK, but we know better now. Better to give them a simpler message and let them delve into the history when they're older.
What's this about smoking? Nobody on Sesame Street smoked. That pipe clearly wasn't lit. Even in 1969, it was pretty well-known that it's unhealthy in a very rapid way for furry, flammable monsters to smoke. The point was that he didn't know what a pipe was for, aside from that you need one to present theatrical productions and that it was smaller than his head and therefore food.
Of course, I have a hard time imagining preschoolers today having any clearer an idea of the intended use of a pipe than Cookie Monster, or even knowing its use as a prop.
For my 5-year-old, Sesame Street is a "sometimes show" because of the politically correct dopes who run the CTW.
Jim Henson is spinning in his grave.
Bitterly Yours,
Oscar the Grouch and Slimy
if smoking a pipe was politically incorrect, than what i saw on educational tv was worse. there was a show i remember watching in school that had a villain named dunedin (dun E dun?) or the like. in one episode it featured a trap that would gas the kids unless they got their synonyms right. cant remember what it was called, but i wasn't traumatized when i saw that trap. we used to do stuff like go out into the woods and beat each other with sticks, play football on the road,build riverboats, and get a match with wd-40 and spray hornet's nests. i think that i turned far more civilized than most of these pc kids that are being raised now a days. course it might have helped that my mother read to us and watched what we did most of the time.
if anyone could help me remember that tv show, think it was canidian in origin as there was an episode having Americans as antagonists during the revolutionary war,can't remember too much because its been a good 15-17 years or so since i saw the show.
For 'ha ha ha' because fears the term Ho derogatory for woman and also may scare some children... WTF???
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,22737250-5006301,00.html
Everything about Santa is about a Jolly 'Ho Ho Ho' and gifts for the children. Yes some children get scared, but it is by no help moly coddling them, help them with that fear (maybe don't throw them at santa, show them there is no reason to be scared). Otherwise yes we will grow up with a society of 'pussies' to scared to face anything.
Fear is natural, consuming fear is not.
Oh and fears of offending women? Fuck off, it's all about context. If your wearing fish nets, short skirt, high heels and standing on a corner along Greeve's St. Fitzroy (known prostitution area in melbourne) maybe you deserve to called a Ho, but I highly doubt a mother, that's grown up with the spirit of christmas taking their child to visit a jolly santa is going to be offended.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of cats. MEOW!!
Already been done...
http://carcino.gen.nz/images/index.php/35a796d8/19ccbee0
Remember "News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters"? Help make it a reality again! http://soylentnews.org
Not sure if you were making an oblique joke-on-a-joke or not, but if you didn't know, Thomas Bowdler's 'Family Shakespeare' in 1818 is in fact the source of the verb 'to bowdlerise'.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Showzen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TV_Funhouse
Hell, what would they think about Max and Moritz ? It is still somewhat popular in German speaking countries and makes classic Sesame Street look like teletubbies (Which are mad fun to watch when you are on weed).
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17161
I agree, the old Sesame Street episodes were great, and I like them a lot better than the new ones. But I am an adult. To a kid, things look different.
I have two kids, including a very curious and observant 4 year old. I watched the original Sesame Street episodes when they aired, and I loved them. But that was 1970, and this is 2007. Context is important. Back then, my father smoked cigars. Smoking was not at all unusual. Some kids who watched the show then might even have been familiar with "Masterpiece Theatre". (With only a handful of channels, what else was there to watch?) So the kids laughed, the parents laughed, and that was it. On to the next skit.
Ok, so fast forward to 2007. Do any kids know Masterpiece Theatre? More to the point, no one in my household smokes. None of the adults my kids associate with smoke. My daughter sees people smoking as she walks up the street to school each day, and she asks questions about it. "What are those people putting in their mouths?" "Why does it smell bad?" etc. I answer her questions as best I can. The main question I cannot answer to her satisfaction is why someone would smoke if (a) it tastes bad, and (b) it will kill you? Addiction is a tough concept to get across to a 4 year old. Anyway...
The Monsterpiece Theatre episodes are funny as hell, but they would raise a lot of questions in my child's mind, and probably other children as well would have the same concerns. "Is cookie monster going to die because he smoked a pipe?" Etc.
These questions are, at best, a distraction from the main point of Sesame Street. These questions were not anticipated by the original shows' creators. Like I said, context is important, and these shows are being viewed 37 years after their original airdate.
Halfway down the page before I find someone whose knee is not jerking.
The sort of moronic crap in TFA comes pretty much exclusively from these type of "family lobbyists". "Family lobbyists" like this are an extreme minority that every now and then find a way to make a loud noise. Not that far removed from the "chistians" who picket the funerals of gay teenagers with signs such as "god hates fags".
The piles of comments blaming parents and anyone else they don't like are absurd, they are buying into the strawman that parents actually agree with this sort of bullshit. Try taking an honest head count of the parents that are cheering the silencing of sesame street and you will find they are indeed a rare beast. How many people here actually know someone like Ned Flanders, I know they must exist somewhere otherwise there would be nothing to parody, but where are they?
BTW: For those who think it's NOT the parents job to sheild their child from parts of the "real world" they cannot handle - how the fuck did you learn to wipe your own arse without drowning in the toilet?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
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Now, Return to Oz, THAT needed censorship, seriously, kids movies from the 80's were scary, none of this Shrek business! I was scared by ET, the way he was always screaming and scared etc, I dont believe modern movies make children cry the same as those? Sad tears if it makes it easier to excuse!
---
Maybe it was painted with lead in China? Man, if kids can't figure this shit out themselves, then fuck 'em -- thin the herd. That's a valuable lesson right there.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
Seriously, have you seen it lately? The only resemblance with the old show is that the puppets have the same names.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
No wonder they don't want kids to see him with his pipe ...
What ?
It wasn't a crack pipe ?
What's the problem then ?
The Cookie monster BEGGED anybody a for cookie and was a little greedy when it landed in his hands. Bert broke out into sighs many times because he would stop himself from cursing out Ernie. Grover was more inventive than Wyle E Coyote but become so sad when his little schemes fail. Oscar the Grouch was dirty, rude and impolite but did you notice alot of viewers loved him anyway.
I noticed one thing about the difference between the early years and the current form of the show. The concept of the show was so new, they were inventing and improvising as they went along. Long before Child Psychiatrists were involved in read-through meetings and Early Child Dev. specialists added their two cents, the writers and actors did what they thought was best. And you know what? I'm thankful for that. You could consider the muppet's behavior in those early years to be more Jr High than 2nd grader. Maybe thats what grab my attention span at time (1975 I was seven). It didn't screw up my developing brain as far as I can tell. I'm putting the DVDs on my Xmas list. If you want to take a happy nostalgia trip if only for a few moments, you should get the DVDs too.
It's better that Cookie Monster ate pipe, rather than layed pipe.
.22 rifles, BB guns, firecrackers, model rockets, tools, electronics, cars, and fishing rods. Everything but cruise missiles.
Seeing as how toys today are sanitized and regulated to the point of near-banishment, I'm amazed how I survived my childhood, especially since it was rife with chemistry sets,
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Ok. This is seriously the most retarded thing I've ever heard. Have we become so liberalized, so politically correct, that we can't show a cookie monster with a pipe or a dude who lives in a garbage can? So let me get this straight. It's not ok to show that stuff, but it is ok to show those teletubbies where one of them is gay? Dude, kids who are three will understand that the dude who lives in a trash can is a joke. But the same three year old kids don't need to be learning about sexuality and stuff. These subjects don't need to be brought up at all. In other words, if we continue down this slippery slope, pretty soon we won't be able to show or say anything. Except talk about sexuality. That seems to be ok.
Seems everything is backwards.
Oh come on now. There's nothing wrong with playing a hard-fought game and then wishing the other team well. If the other team wins - likely, they did play a good game. What's wrong with acknowledging that? To carry over the passion of the game into post-game socialization is almost pathological.
I play competetive baseball (hardball - none of this sissy softball crap for me) about as passionately as one can without being an ass. I ride the other team hard, etc. But when the game's done I can still enjoy a beer with them, after shaking their hands and congratulating them on their victory (normally) or being gracious in our victory (no longer too often, I am afraid).
I have no probs with teaching one's kids to say "I'll get you next time" - but they must also learn to be gracious in both victory and defeat. To only stress revenge is as bad as the wussification against which you are fighting.
Everyone thinks that if you don't know everything your kids are doing every minute of the day, you're a horrible person. When I was a kid, we did things we shouldn't have done (exploring abandoned buildings, playing doctor, whatever) but these things are generally considered to be part of growing up. Freedom entails risk, and we as a society have sworn off of risk.
Note true: Romans 1:26 "For this reason God gave them over to degrading passions; for their women exchanged the natural function for that which is unnatural,"
Words "degrading" and "unnatural" -- not good in the Bible.
Not quite. You passed over the a huge point! The Bible says that Jesus came to fulfill the law. This is important because He was the payment for our sins so that the payment for the law will be satisfied on judgement day. Thus fulfilling justice and demonstrating God's grace and love.
i liked that show when i was, i cant remember, cause i was that little. anyway, that mr rogers, richard simmins and the muppets, i watched em. thier all BAD BAD BAD BAD. but somehow its ok for kids to watch a show called dragonBallz. i jsut thought it was important to mention that the shows we used to watch are not ok cause 1 of em depicts a pipe. but a show named after a mythalogical creatures testicals is ok.
wheres the political correctness? only enforced when it serves a purpose i suppose
i guess bo n duke were gay also, and the a-team was gay too, and so was knight rider, but DragonBallz has nothin to do with sexual orientation.
the shows name always irked me, now i can say how i feel
This lead in paragraph posted on /. represents EVERYTHING that is wrong with modern society. Hell, my kids and I enjoy an episode of South Park (carefully screened by dad first) from time-to-time. Oscar the Grouch has got nothing on Eric Cartman.
Ugh. I disagree with this whole thing, too, and think it's a load of crap. But:when they say,
"These early 'Sesame Street' episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child.'
they don't mean that they were always only intended for grownups; they mean that this release of these early Sesame Street episodes ARE NOW only "intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today's preschool child".
And that's not a lie at all, because that is EXACTLY what they mean. They're saying they intend the present-day release of these early Sesame Street episodes to be only for grown-ups, not that they weren't originally targeted at children as well when they were originally released.
Jeez. It's stupid, but it's not a lie.
When a sudden gust of wind pushes a kick two feet to the right of the upright and you miss the game-winning field goal, that's luck coming into play (unless you're indoors of course).
;)
Heh. I take it you've never been to a game at Giants Stadium
They will label this thing for adults because Cookie Monster eats a fake pipe? All the while ignoring the radical fundamentalist, terrorist activites of Bert? I for one would never let my kids watch a show where they treat a perpetrator of such crimes against humanity as good as they do.
No sig for you!!
Seriously, yes, for all the pain and agony that the PC thugs cause, perhaps some reaction is understandable. But its just a warning label. Its not like they're stopping you from buying it - you can still let your kids get some old-fashionad modelling.
Actually *all* kids stuff should have warnings like this. Something like:
"Trainined professionals have designed this product to enhance the learning of your child. But those trained professionals are probably misguided, or following a fad, or just wrong. Decide for yourself what your children watch."
"And that solves the mystery of the missing ring" - Bender
Now, now Johnny, just sit down and watch Desperate Housewives with mommy... But, but, but... I want to watch the Sesame Street DVD grandpa gave me for Christmas! No, no, Johnny, that isn't appropriate for kids your age. You might pick up bad habits, now be a good boy and help your mommy by watching Desperate Housewives... It makes me sick... Sam
Its rated adults only for a reason . . . have you seen the deleted scenes?
Violence
Teh real big bird
More violence
Big Bird is a prick (taken outside the "Make a Wish" foundation in front of a group of dying handicapped children)
Is death among the "not for children" crowd? Are we no longer equipped to deal with the reality of one's impending end of existence?
8==8 Bones 8==8
Too bad Sesame Street messed you up so bad. Maybe you can sue! Now THAT'S the American thing to do! I too think this is NUTS. We could all putting the children in dire danger watching Bert, Ernie, Cookie Monster, Big Bird, Oscar and their various human friends. WHAT A SACK OF DUNG! I'll bet Jim Henson, Fred (Mister) Rogers, and Bob (Captain Kangaroo) Keeshan are rolling over in their graves! I'm sick and tired of the do-gooders messing with Dawinian processes.... IF we're really the idiots they think we are, then let us die for cryin' out loud... I'm starting to think like Peter Finch's character Howard Beale in the movie Network: I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. I may tie up my grandchildren and MAKE them watch the first two years of Sesame street. Maybe it will make them tough enough to survive in the do-gooder bleeding-heart world we've come to live in. Sure worked for their mothers (my daughters). Too bad I'll have make them watch the DVDs in my bunker to avoid "child abuse" charges.... I repeat, THIS IS NUTS. :-(
.22s and .38s.
They used to go to the dump to play at cowboys 'n indians or cops 'n robbers, and to shoot at rats.
They sort of disappeared from school one week-end (and nobody asked too many questions.)
But, that's kids for ya...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Lesbians are mentioned, I believe exactly once, in the NT. Their actions are considered "shameful even to mention" so that pretty much sounds like sin, especially when they discuss sexual sin and say that it's one of the few Jewish laws the Gentile converts are bound to uphold.
I'd give you a citation, but I cannot begin to count how many times the work filters would go crazy at any search involving lesbians and the Bible. I have a pocket NT, but I don't think that lesbianism is exactly in the concordance, either, and it's Monday, so my brain is working at half-capacity too.
That said, I agree wholeheartedly with the Pope that the mere inclination is NOT sin (after all, being tempted cannot be sin, because even Jesus was tempted). I also very much agree that subjecting people to violence and hatred is VERY sinful and rightfully condemned.
- Polygamy (Jacob & Rachel/Leah)
- Fraud (Jacob and Esau)
- Terrorism (10 plagues -- attacks against a civilian populace to achieve a political result from the rulers)
- Genocide
- Incest (Lot and his daughters)
These and many many more...General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
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Other posters have accurately pointed out that this is nothing more than political correctness taken to extremes, and that it is only one symptom of a much larger problem (paranoia, overprotecting kids, etc.)
I have discovered that situations like this are far from limited to Sesame Street. In a recent example, I found (much to my disgust) that Qubo, the USA distributor for WETA Workshop's series Jane and the Dragon, is censoring what they likely consider to be "lowbrow" humor from the show (belches, farts, etc.) I only found this out when I compared a snippet from an uncensored episode (called "Go West, Young Gardener") with the version Qubo was sending out to be broadcast. A magnificently funny scene, right near the end of the episode, was completely cut short as was an earlier scene about ten minutes in, and all because they featured a couple of dragon-sized farts.
I can't easily prove it, but I have reason to believe that Qubo is also cutting about 15-30 seconds out of each episode just to make more time for ads. That's not just big-brothering -- that's greed, plain and simple. I finally gave up and ordered the series DVDs from Australia (they're not available in the US).
The bizarre cultural 'war' on not letting kids experience the real world has permeated well outside the realm of media. Example: The Sea World parks are all extremely careful never to present any view of the animals which does not fit with their carefully-crafted image of "Everyone's Happy!" that they want the public to swallow. This is, I think, only one reason why audiences are often shocked when the park has behavioral trouble with the whales. The "Shamu" image that they like to present has no basis whatsoever in the reality that these animals have emotions, and free will of their own in terms of behavior. You cross the line with an orca in a bad mood (or any animal for that matter), and it is very likely you're going to get hurt.
As near as I can tell, these tendencies are pretty much limited to the USA. I've been to southeastern Mexico (Cancun, Playa del Carmen), and from what I've seen and experienced there the attitudes towards kids and the real world are 180 degrees different from inside US borders.
So, take heart... It doesn't seem to be anywhere near a worldwide thing (yet... pray it doesn't go that far).
Keep the peace(es).
Bruce Lane, KC7GR,
Blue Feather Technologies