An Open Letter to Sesame Street:
[caption id="attachment_1001" align="alignleft" width="120" caption="Guest Editor: Shirley Hopper, mom, writer for WTFN"]
[/caption]I read today that some people want Bert and Ernie to get married. What is our world coming to? Sesame Street is a program that we use to babysit our children and teach them the things that we don’t have time to do anymore. At one point, we were responsible for indoctrinating our children to believe everything we did. Today, with many parents working, we rely increasingly on television programs to teach our children how they should act.
When I was young, I learned that when I entered my house, I should take off my shoes and put on my slippers. Did my dad teach me that? No, he was out with his secretary, but that’s a story for another time. It was Mr. Rogers. He taught me such great lessons not only like the one I just said about the shoes, but also about how you could get away from your problems (like that one day with Mr. Jenkins after school) by just pretending to go to a land with puppets. My land of make-believe didn’t have an old king, but it did have an anthropomorphic sports bra.
[caption id="attachment_1002" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Can't it just be "Like?""]
[/caption]So, with television being so important to our maturation, I am really upset that some people want Sesame Street to depict two people in a happy relationship. If they are just good friends, that is completely ok with me. But, to say that they love each other is a bridge too far. How dare this dangerous program teach our children that two men can care for each other? I have no problem with them having gay people on television. But in my day, gay people didn’t act normal. They wore bright patterns and flitted around the screen with limp wrists. Depicting gay people acting just like us is dangerous. What if my children thought that it was ok to be gay? What a nightmare, not that there’s anything wrong with that ;)
People have also been ignoring the obvious. A Bert and Ernie matrimony would not just thrust a gay couple deep within our childrens’ mind-hole, but an interracial gay couple! Have people forgotten that Ernie is obviously native American, and Bert is clearly Asian? (I hope Ernie doesn’t let Bert drive!)
Thank God Fox News is on the story. If 900 people are filling out an online petition, we clearly need to be worried. Nearly 38,000 people signed an online petition denouncing Jerry Falwell, and, only 6 years later, God struck him dead. To put in perspective how huge a deal it is that 900 people signed the Bert + Ernie = Homo petition, just think that in a typical household, there is 5 people. Then, add five more. You’re not done. You have to do that 160 times before you get to 900! Sorry for making your skin crawl.
Also, what if Bert and/or Ernie gets AIDS? Have you thought of that? Try explaining that to your kids. "How many t-cells does Bert have? 1 ah ah ah!" Try coming back from that, PBS.
I will stand up against Sesame Street making Bert and Ernie gay. Please come sign my onlinepetition. I’m not sure if we can make it to 900, but together we can do anything!
Please sign the petition at: http://www.petitiononline.com/bandegm/petition.html
(You can follow Shirley at http://twitter.com/#!/momagainstworld )
No comments:
Post a Comment