Cookie Monster needs your help
Cookie Monster’s PR agent (who is a real person) at Sesame Street, informed me (through an intermediary) that Cookie (his first name) is up for “person of the day,” against Bill Clinton, on CNN’s show “Paula Zahn Now” (or is that “Paul Lazanow”?). So if you think Cookie should be person of the day, please vote here. (If you click this link after today, April 12, they may be on to the next poll.)
UPDATE 4/13/05 2:40pm: Cookie Monster won the poll. Thank you for stuffing the ballot box voting.
And now, a serious comment about a seemingly whimsical event.
This is, of course, prompted by the publicity surrounding Mr. Monster’s new diet — that is, they are taking away Cookie Monster’s cookies!
As Chelsea J. Carter writes via The Associated Press:
First PBS announced that “Sesame Street†would kick off its 36th season this week with a multiyear story arc about healthy habits. No problem there; childhood obesity rates are soaring. Then I learned of changes that turned my “Sesame Street†world upside-down.
My beloved blue, furry monster — who sang “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me†— is now advocating eating healthy. There’s even a new song — “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food,†where Cookie Monster learns there are “anytime†foods and “sometimes†foods.
“Sacrilege!†I cried. “That’s akin to Oscar the Grouch being nice and clean.†(Co-workers gave me strange looks. But I didn’t care.)
Being a journalist, I did the only thing I knew how to do. I investigated why “Sesame Street†gave Cookie Monster a health makeover.
(Despite?) not being a journalist, I was able to find that press release, too. It says, in part:
Sesame Street’s newest curriculum is part of a larger Sesame Workshop company-wide initiative, “Healthy Habits for Life,” created in response to the growing crisis of childhood obesity among children. The preschool years are a crucial time in children’s lives to foster healthy habits. Recent data reflect both the immediate and long-term consequences of poor dietary behaviors. Tackling the critical issues of health and well being, Sesame Workshop continues to set the benchmark in educational television with Sesame Street storylines that guide preschoolers and their caregivers through lessons related to healthy eating, the importance of active play and other key activities such as hygiene and rest.
…
Along with the “Healthy Moments,” the new season will feature all-new Muppet “street” scenes, new animations and original live-action films that all tout activities and behaviors that are good for you. Storylines include: “The Healthy Foods Name Game,” hosted by Mr. Healthy Foods, Elmo must find four healthy foods of various colors on Sesame Street before the mouse can climb to the top of the refrigerator; and “American Fruit Stand,” Sesame’s take on the 50s variety series that features a singing Miles rhapsodizing about the nutritional benefits of fruits and vegetables. Other segments include a song entitled, “A Cookie is a Sometimes Food,” where Hoots the Owl explains that there are anytime foods and sometimes foods: cookies are foods that you can eat sometimes, but fruits are delicious and healthy anytime! Additionally, every other show will feature a “Health Module;” a cluster of four segments related to health, exercise and nutrition.
Now, I’ll bet if they looked through the archives over at the Children’s Television Workshop, they’d find that whoever thought up the character of Cookie Monster 36 years ago had in mind precisely the same thing: to show that “cookies are foods that you can eat sometimes,” by creating a character who eats them to excess, and making that character an object of laughter.
In other words, it’s no new discovery that that eating too many cookies is not healthy, or that kids (and other people) like to eat cookies, and left unconstrained by parents or nutritional knowledge would eat too many cookies. They knew this in 1968 when they were designing Sesame Street. The original behavior of Cookie Monster was not some evil corporate conspiracy to get kids to eat more cookies — it was to get them to eat moderately by making gluttony look ridiculous.
Now, of course, we live in an era in which thje entertainment and educational elites believe in a “politically correctness” dictates that we not mention anything that’s bad. They have to pretend it doesn’t exist, in the hope that that will make it go away. They don’t want kids eating too many cookies, so they can’t have a character who eats too many cookies. They assume kids are too dumb to see, instinctively, parody for what it is — but not too dumb to know when they’re being nagged about what they eat. As a result, they can parody no one — except themselves, unintentionally.
