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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.'"
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?
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..."
I'm skeptical that this is a left-right issue.
..?
Parents on the right are just as restrictive as the parents on the left. My friend was raised conservative Christian, and his parents wouldn't let him read or see science fiction or fantasy. I don't see any kids playing in the streets, ever, republican or otherwise.
What are the causes behind this? Is it a sue-happy society? Is it that we're just all just perfectly content to use the Internet? Or, did we somehow just become afraid of other people, and don't know how to act around them? Is it some motion that happened in psychology, that led people to think a certain thing? Is it a media effect, where a problem in one place is broadcast everywhere, and then we go into lockdown everywhere? Is it risk-aversion, no matter how small (erroring "slightly" in favor of too much caution, as repeated policy)
What?
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
So true about the way that kids are raised these days, and it's one of my pet peeves. The sensationalist media (among other things) has made most parents very fearful of all kinds of horrible things that might happen if their kids are allowed out of their padded rooms and tightly-supervised activities. Television news is the worst; if anything nasty happens anywhere, they'll make it seem like it's happening right next door and all around you, every day. People want to think of themselves as good parents and especially want to appear to others like they are, but in order to achieve that label you have to submit to the general hysteria. So, kids are trotted from one adult-organized activity to the next, and seldom get the opportunity for spontaneous, inventive play with their peers.
Reminds me of a report on a local TV news programs a few years ago on Halloween. A reporter was interviewing a cop at a police station where candy was being x-rayed for the usual pins, needles, razor blades, etc. The gist of the report was that you're taking a big chance if you don't bring your kid's candy in for this scanning. So the reporter finally asks how much of this junk they find on a typical Halloween, and the cop had to reply that, in fact, they'd never found a single foreign object in any piece of candy in the 15 or 20 years that they'd performed this service. But, of course there's always a first time and you can't be too careful.
I'm glad I grew up when I did, when kids could be kids.
Well, one might even wonder if that is happening in the services now as well... For instance, I was absolutely stunned to see that ladders are now being used to *help* recruits out of the backs of trucks. The recruits line up, hand their weapon to someone already on the ground and step out of the back of the truck and down the ladder. What happened to securing your weapon and hopping out of the back? Learn how to jump Marine!
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PeeWee's Playhouse was the most bizarre and subversive television program ever made by anybody, save perhaps for Monty Python's Flying Circus. It's a pitty Rueben's committed career suicide, because that show as the most brilliant half-hour acid trip in history. I'm not precisely sure how it ever got on the air, particularly on Saturday mornings amongst all the 22 minute advertisements for toys (better known as the Saturday morning cartoon). I was in my late teens when it was on, and I have a suspicion that a healthy chunk of the audience was 16 years or older.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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
I recently had to do a double take concerning the everyone wins mentality. We have thought our 3 year old son that when you lose, you give the other person a grin and say "I'll get you next time.". When we race to the car, or play video games, sometimes he wins, and more importantly sometimes he looses. When he wins, we tell him that we will get him next time. This to me says that I acknowledge you won, and that I definitely want to play again. But, when we do, I will look to give you a much bigger challenge.
We took him to a chess club, so that he could get some practice playing against people other than me, my wife, and Chess Master. When he lost, he told the other kid that he would get him next game, and suddenly there was a room full of disapproving eyes on us.
To me, the "Good Game" line has always been a PC way to be an ass. If you are the looser, telling the winner that they played a good game seems kind of stupid. If you are the winner, it always comes across as condescending.
I don't see any kids outside ever -- I'm a European living in the U.S., and this absence of kids on the street is by far the weirdest and creepiest thing about this country, to my eyes. I don't think it's because of computers and DVDs and such; kids in Western Europe have access to those things, too, but they also want to go out, go cycling in the woods, kick a ball in the street, etc. American culture in general is saturated with fear. Compare the reactions to 9/11 and the bombings in London, or just try living on both sides of the Atlantic for a while and you'll simply *feel* the difference.
When I was 5, I walked to kindergarten. By myself. One year later, I started going to school, which was farther away -- one mile each way. I rode my bike, again by myself. And today, more than 30 years later, that's still how things work over there, but here, people freak out at the very idea. But then, hey, why am I surprised, this being a country that finds it necessary to build a monstrous nuclear-armed army, in a world that is almost entirely benevolent or at least neutral towards them, and then pick fights with third world countries left and right? Nobody is more afraid of bullying than the bully himself...
- Thomas