Elmo’s not red. He’s a jerk.
A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter. If you’re an American of a certain age something in your memory just got jarred. You can see the modish nineteen-seventies animation and hear the voices.
This was of course the Sesame Street short cartoon featuring a little girl who had been tasked by her mother to pick up those three items from the store. As she skipped along she repeated the items to herself and when she got to the store she remembered two out of the three immediately.
The third eluded her until she concentrated real hard on her mother’s admonition and then it came back: “A loaf of bread, a container of milk, and a stick of butter.”
The little girl had done a good job. She’d put the effort in to commit the items to memory and she helped out mom, a thoughtful and useful act and a good lesson to all of us watching.
Fast forward to today and the universe of Sesame Street has changed a bit.
Forget bread, milk and butter and remember the following: “Things on the outside like our skin color...make us who we are.”
That is what a new character named Elijah explained to Elmo about race in a new promotional video.
Here is the official Sesame Street description:
“When Elmo notices that some of the leaves in the park match his red fur and some match his friend Wes’s brown skin, he wonders how skin gets its color. Wes’s dad Elijah explains it’s from melanin—something everyone has in their bodies that gives us our skin, eye, and hair color. These things make us who we are, and many people call this race.”
Okay. This would be a good time to begin drinking.
Let’s go through a couple of the key quotes from Elijah:
“The color of our skin is an important part of who we are,” Elijah tells us.
No, Elijah. We’ve been trying to move off that for some fairly glaring reasons.
“Things on the outside like our skin color, our hair texture, our noses, our mouths and eyes, make us who we are,” Elijah continues.
This kind of talk would be welcome during a keynote address at an Aryan Nation meeting but why are Sesame Street muppets making such declarations?
When exactly did we pull a 180 on this? When was “content of our character” exorcised?
Our skin color does not make us who we are. I cannot believe I am having to say this in 2021 and that this divisive idiocy is being injected into a children’s show that has historically taught that love and respect among people (and muppets) superseded any of our physical differences.
The little girl in the “stick of butter” animation picking up the groceries for mom was also black but that is not who she is. Who she is is a helpful, responsible, resourceful child who did a nice thing, not a soulless collection of physical attributes.
Elmo is not merely “red”. In fact, that is perhaps his most unremarkable characteristic. He’s a self-centered jerk who sings and speaks about himself incessantly. That is why reasonable people dislike him, and rightfully so.
Likewise, Grover is not “blue,” he’s a well-meaning but incompetent waiter.
Oscar the Grouch is not “green,” he’s an ill-tempered, antisocial and sadistic grump.
Mr. Snuffleupagus is not huge and brown, he’s a mood-killer, with, as a friend said during an allnighter following our high school graduation after many Bud Dry beers, a “piss-poor attitude.”
Kermit the Frog is not “green” - he even bemoaned his color in a classic song on the matter - He’s an affable and intellectually curious muppet.
I realize that Sesame Street has always been a show with liberal/progressive culture running through it and though as an adult I don’t tolerate the creeping feeling that I’m being lectured to, as children it was surely a good thing that many races and cultures were being represented on the show. In some parts of the country it is likely that cultures were discovering each other for the first time due to Sesame Street.
Further, Sesame Street premiered in 1969, just a year after MLK had been assassinated and the country was experiencing the most civil unrest it had endured in one hundred years.
I’m happy to see new and different Sesame Street muppets, keep them coming. However, hearing Wes and his dad Elijah shoot the breeze about melanin levels is an ominous departure from the usual goings-on on Sesame Street which included obsessive counting by a muppet vampire and a guy who binge-eats cookies.
The Sesame Street universe was once a refuge for children from the toxic culture the adults had created on the outside. Reasonable people agree that showing cooperation, friendship and unity among a diverse people is beneficial but reasonable people do not agree with critical race theory and certainly don’t want it foisted on our children.
So cut it out.
Sunny Day
Sweepin' the clouds away
On my way to where the air is sweet
Can you tell me how to get?
How to get to Sesame Street
Come and play
Everything's A-OK
Friendly neighbors there
That's where we meet
Can you tell me how to get
How to get to Sesame Street?
It’s all there. No need to overthink it.
Let’s be friendly neighbors, not white, black, blue or green neighbors.