Evil Uncle Elmo, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #225
June 6, 2011 Mike Raub 0 Comments
Did you know that Elmo is a commie? So are Kermit the Frog, the Cookie Monster and the rest of the Sesame Street crew. According to right-wing columnist Ben Shapiro’s new book Primetime Propaganda, Sesame Street indoctrinates our children in “the left-wing agenda.” Damn, they never sent me a copy of that agenda thing.
Shapiro notes that since 9/11 the show has been promoting the peaceful resolution of conflicts, which is a Communist talking point if I ever heard one. Oscar the Grouch has made fun of Fox News, which is another certain sign of the left-wing propagandist. They tried to comfort children whose parents are going through divorce, a crime worthy of Guantanamo internment. Worst of all, Neil Patrick Harris actually played a character called the Fairy Shoeperson. Holy George Lincoln Rockwell, what is PBS doing with all that foundation money?
You might respond “But Sesame Street isn’t even in prime-time.” Yes, and you also might respond “This guy is a goddamned lunatic.” His book does cover the left-wing, socialist, communist and possibly Muslim inclinations of shows such as Happy Days, Friends and M*A*S*H.
This is not to say I don’t have any problems with Sesame Street. Ever since its introduction way back in 1969 (of course at the very pinnacle of American hippiecommiedom) all too many parents have felt very comfortable plopping their kid in front of the nanny-tube in the belief that their temporarily unwanted child will be getting an education. It’s all too easy to put your kid in front of Big Bird’s teat while you dash out to the woodshed for a couple of cigarettes. You know your kid is all the better for the experience, and he/she/it will probably have a leg up in pre-school (and, ultimately, college) over those parents who deploy the WWE as their cathode-ray baby-sitter.
But these parents are now on the downside of the issue, and Ben Shapiro has little to worry about going forward. As it turns out, today’s youth has a decisively waning interest in teevee.
For the second year in a row, prime-time television viewership by the key 18 to 49 year old demographic has dropped – this time by 9%. That’s in addition to last year’s 1½% drop, and 2.7% drop the year before. Do you spot a trend here? As kids move up into the key demo – the only place where still-overpaid teevee execs consider us human – they are more reluctant to tear themselves away from computers, video games, iPads, downloading, iPods, YouTube, iPhone, Facebook, Twitter and whatever new social communications epidemic that’s popular at any given point in time.
To be fair there’s an exception to this, but it’s not one that is likely to make Shapiro happy. The exception to this trend is Univision, whose numbers are up 7.6% from a year ago. Univision is one of those commie Spanish-language channels; it’s where illegal immigrants get the idea to give birth to legal American children who will grow up and overthrow the Republican government.
But Shapiro and the Legion of Foggy Goebbels Clones will conveniently overlook all the various right-wing sites to brand YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the rest as commie communications and the iPhone, iPads, and iPods as their delivery systems. In order to make them happy (and Barack Obama’s always working on that), we’ll have government spyware and Trojan Horses to monitor our online choices and to flag various buzzwords in order to eliminate anybody that Mussolini wouldn’t love.
The right always conflates all objections to its brutal and moronic policies as certain proof of socialism, communism and Islam. But let’s face it: anybody who advocates Fox News as the pearl of truth, justice and the American way has no business criticizing someone else’s’ bias, be it real, imagined, and/or preposterous.
Deeply psychotic Mike Gold performs the weekly two-hour Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind ass-kicking bizarro music and blather radio show on The Point, www.getthepointradio.com, every Sunday at 7:00 PM Eastern, replayed three times during the week (check the website above for times). Likewise, his daily Weird Scenes Inside The Gold Mind political and cultural rants stupefies the masses at the same venue.
Rick Oliver
June 6, 2011 - 12:42 pm
Yes, I’ll never forgive Sesame Street for not teaching my kids to shoot first and ask questions later. Kendall luckily quickly saw through the commie propaganda and refused to learn any math that didn’t have dollar signs in the equations.
Martha Thomases
June 6, 2011 - 1:39 pm
Wait, if it’s the Commie position that violence is not the answer, why did we have to spend all that money on the Cold War?
Mike Gold
June 6, 2011 - 2:08 pm
It was all a ruse, Martha. Eisenhower’s military/industrial/Congressional complex promoted anti-Commie “one nation under god” hysteria just to sell more weapons systems, build more nukes, expand the Pentagon budget to pay for more overpriced bullshit that the Pentagon doesn’t want, and keep more assholes in office. As I’ve been saying, Bill Maher is right.
Mike Gold
June 6, 2011 - 2:10 pm
Rick, I don’t think Sesame Street is up against the type of shows you suggest. In other words, everybody’s kids can have their cake and eat it too.
Particularly with enhanced underwriting.
R. Maheras
June 6, 2011 - 3:07 pm
Sesame Street gets public money, and therefore should be designed to reflect the philosophical viewpoints of as wide a cross-section of Americans as possible. Ditto for NPR. Unfortunately, both were hijacked by the left decades ago. The only difference between then and now is that today the left is in such a comfort zone, they are getting real sloppy about protecting the facade that their broadcasts are not philosophically and politically slanted their way. This arrogance is what gives valid ammunition to conservative critics like Shapiro.
Face it, Shapiro and his ilk aren’t putting words in the mouths of the folks they interview. Their biggest sin is that — in the time-honored tradition of the investigative journalist — they pretend to be “one of the gang” to get the interviewees to lower their guard and voice their true (and often illegal and/or unethical) points of view.
An aside, Mike. How can you, with a straight face, possibly compare Shapiro to Goebbels?
Rick Oliver
June 6, 2011 - 4:02 pm
I spent a lot of time watching Sesame Street with my kids back in the late 80s, and somehow I missed the “leftist agenda” — and somehow so did my kids. As Elvis Costello might have said: “What’s so leftist about peace, love, and understanding?”
Reg
June 6, 2011 - 5:05 pm
“What’s so leftist about peace, love, and understanding?”
Ah so. The proverbial 64K question.
Mike Gold
June 6, 2011 - 5:13 pm
Rick, that would be Nick Lowe. Costello just covered it (and Lowe produced it). But I agree with your point — why is peace, love and understanding leftist, ipso facto?
Russ, I did not compare Shapiro to Goebbels. If you construe my comment (“Shapiro and the Legion of Foggy Goebbels Clones”) as a comparison, then Shapiro falls far, far short of Joey’s genius. Evil genius to be sure, but genius nonetheless.
But as I’ve said before — and the actual quote comes from my friend Glenn Hauman — I’ll stop comparing the American Right to Nazis when they stop burning books. When they decide that NPR and Sesame Street has a liberal agenda (NPR has a BORING agenda; so boring it should be illegal to drive and listen to NPR at the same time), when they — in this case Shapiro — accuse totally public and open media such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter as liberal media, then they aren’t Nazis, they’re just fucking insane apes flinging their shit at the closest fan.
So, what do we have here? Bottom line: Shapiro is not as good as a Nazi, but he is an insane ape.
Mike Gold
June 6, 2011 - 5:14 pm
And, yes, I jumped on the Nick Lowe thing to head Pennie off!
R. Maheras
June 6, 2011 - 7:32 pm
I haven’t read Shapiro’s book, so I don’t know what accusations he made. Hell, I haven’t even SEEN a copy yet, and I was in about seven different airport bookstores at four different airports over the weekend (the one in the Portland, Ore., airport was by far the best).
In any case, the “let’s burn books” rap against conservatives is, for the most part, horse patooty anyway, in my opinion. Relatively speaking, there are only a few conservative loons who advocate the most extreme attacks on free speech, and the exhortations of those folks never gets any serious traction from their more reasonable comrades.
On the other side of the coin, however, there’s been a growing and disturbing trend among more extreme liberals who, because they hate recent conservative communications successes so much, want to actually pass blatantly unconstitutional laws to clamp down on things like the Internet, radio and television.
Which is why I said it before and I’ll say it again: I don’t trust fanatics of any political stripe.
Mike Gold
June 6, 2011 - 8:35 pm
“Recent conservative communications successes”?? Name one. Talk radio? Fox News? Neither are successes — they dominate the demographic commonly referred to as “The Nearly Dead.” They are the shovel that is burying AM radio. The average viewer of Fox News is older than me. The average viewer of MSNBC is younger. They attract a smaller audience, but one the advertisers want more than old farts like me.
Until they legalize marijuana, of course.
Shapiro’s books, including the current one, are available from many if not all major e-book services.
R. Maheras
June 7, 2011 - 8:43 am
Hey, Mike, you totally side-stepped my main point about liberals who have recently been clamoring to CURB free speech. How you perceive the success or non-success of recent conservative communications activities is irrelevant.
Besides, if these conservative communications platforms are as marginal as you say, then that makes liberal efforts to silence them all the more despicable.
Rick Oliver
June 7, 2011 - 10:15 am
Who are these liberals who have been clamoring to curb free speech? I’m not saying it ain’t so, I just haven’t heard anything about it — but I’m notoriously uninformed.
And sorry about the incorrect attribution to Costello. I’ve heard both versions (and saw Rockpile at the Riviera in Chicago back in the day), and for some reason my addled brain thought Lowe was covering a Costello song, maybe just because I heard the Costello version first.
Mike Gold
June 7, 2011 - 2:01 pm
Russ… I didn’t sidestep it. I’ve said many times before — people always want the other side to shut the hell up. Right wing college kids shout down left-wing speakers, left-wing college kids shout down right-wing speakers, people who get bussed in to town hall meetings shout down everybody. White Sox fans shout down anybody who comes within 10 yards. Those guys are dangerous.
I remember doing a workshop with Abbie Hoffman at Bradley University where we got stink bombed. That was a disgusting annoyance, but today it would be perceived a terrorist attack. As we drove back to Chicago (at 2 in the morning) four police cars with lights aflashing pulled us over for a “routine traffic check” that somehow included a search of the car and its occupants. So I know about this technique. I respond to really stupid people who write incredibly stupid books and then go on teevee just to annoy me. As I get older, though, I plan on diverting my energy to shouting at the teevee weatherman.
Opera fans are the worst. They put on formal wear so they can throw shit.
Mike Gold
June 7, 2011 - 2:02 pm
Rick — Regarding Nick Lowe: I forgive you. And Nick has forgiven you ALL the way to the bank.
anthony weiner
June 7, 2011 - 4:31 pm
Can you show me how to get to Sesame St?
pennie
June 7, 2011 - 4:36 pm
“And, yes, I jumped on the Nick Lowe thing to head Pennie off!”
Damn. I love the sound of breaking glass…
Seriously, with this take on Sesame St, whatever would they make of my personal fave–Fraggle Rock. Now there’s a hippie commie show if I ever saw one–a “community,” really a commune full of fun loving, happy, singing, bouncy folks of all colors…hmm…Down in Fraggle Rock, indeed!
Mike Gold
June 7, 2011 - 5:13 pm
The whole educational thing is a Commie plot. Always has been. Those school marms in the westerns? Commies. All of them.
Oh, and Rep. Weiner, don’t worry about Sesame Street. You’ll be redistricted out of it. But you do have a well-dressed dick.
anthony weiner
June 7, 2011 - 5:31 pm
Uh, Mike? Despite being thought of as a dressed turkey, my undressed dick is educated and thoughtful. Highly educated. Wait…does that make my dick part of a commie plot? Oh noooooo…..
anthony weiner
June 7, 2011 - 5:32 pm
In fact, my dick is part of a big weiner between two buns!
anthony weiner
June 7, 2011 - 5:33 pm
And that’s Richard–not dick–to you heathen paparazzis.
Doug Abramson
June 7, 2011 - 8:01 pm
pennie,
I’ve always new that the Fraggles were dirty hippies, but what are Doozer sticks made of? The Fraggles can’t seem to stop munching them.
R. Maheras
June 8, 2011 - 9:20 am
Rick — The argument about reviving The Fairness Doctrine is one of the more obvious indications that some liberals seem to only want free speech when it’s beneficial to their camp. The Wiki entry sums up the “for” and “against” fairly well.
What sets off my alarm bells is when someone (Republican or Democrat) says that methods of mass communication like TV, radio, and the Internet, need to be politically “neutral” or “reflect all sides of an issue.”
The former is very rare, and the latter infers that no viewpoint is ever “right” or “wrong.”
Why is neutrality very difficult in any news-reporting outlet (of which blogs have now quickly become)? I answer that in my blog essay about the “myth” of media bias, which you can read here: http://open.salon.com/blog/r_maheras/2011/03/03/the_myth_of_media_bias
The fact is would be very, very difficult — if not impossible — to legislate communication “neutrality.” It would also be unconstitutional, in my opinion.
Mike — I suspect we probably agree much more than we disagree about the issue of free speech.
pennie
June 8, 2011 - 5:26 pm
Doug, Doozer sticks–isn’t that what they sell as “singles” in parks?
Doug Abramson
June 8, 2011 - 8:04 pm
pennie,
I’m pure as the driven slush. I have NO idea about what you’re talking about.
pennie
June 9, 2011 - 3:07 pm
Doug, would you like to purchase some time shares on the Mackinac Bridge for the summer? Rentals are going FAST!
}’;>)
Rick Oliver
June 10, 2011 - 9:00 am
R. Maheras:
I suspect we’re mostly in agreement. “Fairness” in media is not what the founders had in mind, and most of the press they wanted to protect at the time was far more lopsided than most of what you see today. It was precisely those unpopular and controversial expressions of free speech that are at the core of the first amendment.
Mike Gold
June 10, 2011 - 2:01 pm
Russ, I think we agree about a lot. That’s the upside of keeping an open mind and of resorting to respect at the end of the day.
I don’t think the Fairness Doctrine revival attempt was well supported by more than a handful of people, and I doubt that many of them really understood it. As a guy who was broadcasting during its era, let me tell you that at best it’s a sword that cuts both ways. And it’s always a stupefying pain in the ass that has little to do with “fairness.”
I’m always surprised to learn just how many people think it’s still in effect.