Sesame Street is inappropriate for small children. (pause) Huh?

Ok, that’s it. I’ve had it. We’ve gone too far, and this mamby-pamby, politically-correct, protect our children from reality at all costs bullhockey must stop.

The first episodes of Sesame Street come with a warning label more appropriate for today’s rap singers than classic children’s television: in what universe has this venerable show been deemed ‘for adults only’?

Ours.

The recent release on DVD of Sesame Street volumes I and II contain a warning so risible as to be unbelieved if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child.”

*thud* Excuse me?

Virginia Heffernan writes this in her New York Times article entitled, “Sweeping the Clouds Away“:

At a recent all-ages home screening, a hush fell over the room. “What did they do to us?” asked one Gen-X mother of two, finally. The show rolled, and the sweet trauma came flooding back. What they did to us was hard-core. Man, was that scene rough. The masonry on the dingy brownstone at 123 Sesame Street, where the closeted Ernie and Bert shared a dismal basement apartment, was deteriorating. Cookie Monster was on a fast track to diabetes. Oscar’s depression was untreated. Prozacky Elmo didn’t exist.

Nothing in the children’s entertainment of today, candy-colored animation hopped up on computer tricks, can prepare young or old for this frightening glimpse of simpler times. Back then — as on the very first episode, which aired on PBS Nov. 10, 1969 — a pretty, lonely girl like Sally might find herself befriended by an older male stranger who held her hand and took her home. Granted, Gordon just wanted Sally to meet his wife and have some milk and cookies, but . . . well, he could have wanted anything. As it was, he fed her milk and cookies. The milk looks dangerously whole.

So, what has parents recoiling in horror from these episodes? Let’s see. Cookie Monster smokes a pipe and later eats it; we won’t even begin to touch upon his cookie binging. Big Bird hallucinates big, fluffy elephants til apparently, folks were threatening to send him to rehab. Oscar the Grouch is… grouchy!! Heaven forfend. Let’s not even touch upon the dubious relationship between the curmudgeonly Burt and his dimwitted amant ami, Ernie.

My favorite reaction to this warning label comes from an incredibly eloquent man on LJ who also writes for DCist. In his reaction to all this idiocy (whose title, btw, comes closer to Avenue Q than Sesame Street, and more power to him for bucking the politically correct), he writes:

Or, for parents who’d rather not just let the TV teach their children, they could use it as an avenue towards teaching not just that smoking, gluttony and general bitchiness aren’t behaviors that kids should model, but also that used in the proper context, these things can be used to dramatic, comedic, and allegorical effect.

Then, maybe those kids won’t grow up into humorless and painfully literal adults who assume that no one under the age of 18 could possibly be capable of some guided critical thinking and the separation of what they see and how it impacts on how they act.

What saddens me the most is that we’re getting to a point where the show has been around long enough that a lot of the folks saying that Sesame Street of all things is a bad influence probably grew up with the show themselves. Or, maybe they didn’t, and that’s the problem.

Please read all of Lonecellotheory’s blog entry on this subject, and pay close attention to the last paragraph.

We live in an age of extreme censorship, both internal and external, brought on in some small part by this new reality of a hush-hush police state complete with Big Brother surveillance. I’m fearful that we are too worried about conforming; without those who dare to break the mold, push the envelope, go to extremes, question an authority who will not bear up to close scrutiny, there will be no new thought, no real debate, no genuine understanding of what we are and who we are. It’s a brave new world out there, and I for one am frightened.