Slashdot Mirror
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?
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..."
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.
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.
Yes
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
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.
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.
Yeah, and apparently they're using these body armour shields in helmets instead of just biting down on some leather and cauterizing the wound with the cigarette they were chomping on as they mowed down bad guys with a minigun. What a bunch of pussies!
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
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 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
Full combat gear during World War 2:
35 pounds
Full combat gear in Iraq, 2007:
80 pounds
The soldiers have also gotten heavier. Unfortunately, ankles are still built about the same.
I was raised Catholic, so here's my perspective: Homosexuality is not so bad according to Catholics and the Pope (well, John Paul II was very lenient, Benedict is more catious). Many don't believe this, so here's the Pope:
Although the particular inclination of the homosexual person is not a sin, it is a more or less strong tendency ordered to an intrinsic moral evil, and thus the inclination itself must be seen as an objective disorder...It is deplorable that homosexual persons have been and are the object of violent malice in speech or in action. Such treatment deserves condemnation from the Church's pastors wherever it occurs. - Pope Benedict XVI
Condemnation of male homosexuality (girls don't get much of a mention in the bible and are free to munch carpet) extends from rules proscribed in Leviticus, which also call for the stoning to death of those that work on the sabbath and many other antiquated and unobserved rituals. Catholics study the bible the way it was meant to be studied, not literally but interpretively. Also, the new testament tells us that the old ways need not be heeded, only that we should accept Christ and his message, though others interpret this differently. Either way, we have stopped condemning sabbath violators to death as well as homosexuals.
The priest wears a robe as a part of a ritual symbolizing his loss of individuality among other things, which is also why the Pope often changes his name upon ordination - he sacrifices his individuality to become a representative of Christ on earth.
The whole Jesus thing is simply that he cast off the old rules (ie. Leviticus) to say there is only one rule, love your neighbour as you love yourself. You should care because what the world needs now, is love, sweet love.
Religion matters in this day and age because it is still a great way to explore the metaphysical. God matters because humanity matters, and God is just a metaphor for humanity as a whole.
All this said I am strongly (devoutly?) atheist, as I believe there is no mythical creator deity but simply that we are all gods, whose individual and collective achievements create mythical gods as time goes on. I do believe there is more to this universe than matter and time alone, such that science, numbers and even language are powerless to describe. That said, I read the works of the prophets in the bible, the koran, as I do the acts of the gods in the epic of Gilgamesh simply to enhance my wisdom with that of ages past. There is no need to condemn the bible if you just look at it as a nice poetry book, just condemn the acts of those who use ambiguous poetry as justification of their actions.