Crazy days, baby. Just don’t let this information get into the hands of anyone who can’t pay for it.
I remember when Jim Henson died, we have a family story. The Baroque Baby-Bro was on basic training (I know!) for the US National Guard. Don’t worry, he joined as a Quaker and got his medic training: he just couldn’t do live improv forever…. One day he called home, and was telling Mom all about how basic was going.
‘Hey,’ she said to him. ‘You don’t sound too good, are you all right? Tired? Is anything wrong?’
‘Well’, he said. ‘It’s – it’s… It’s this Jim Henson thing… you know. The guys are all just really upset, everybody’s just, you know, sitting there… or walking around, like… ‘
So if that’s the flipping National Guard, I pity old Grubby-Mitts. He’s done it now. I pity his kids, they’re the ones who’ll really suffer.
There’s not a kid in America under the age of fifty who didn’t grow up under the capacious and loving wing of Big Bird. Yes, Big bird is a puppet. He’s a puppet with real people inside and behind him. By hitting at Sesame Street, Grubby-Mitts has only reminded huge swathes of people how important – how decently American – the values were that put Sesame Street on the air, the excitement it generated, and the belief in helping others that it fostered. In fact, Big Bird is mostly about love. That love has been freely available not only to the inner-city kids, possibly disadvantaged, for whom it was embodied into an eight-foot avian puppet, bot to all kids everywhere who have access to a TV set with Sesame Street playing on it. In other countries it might be just an American educational programme, but in America it’s in the cloth. And it’s the best of us.
And the putative President of the United States doesn’t want to fund it. It’s not important. It’s a drain. It’s for the 47%.
Here you can read what the erstwhile design director of the New York Times and now art director of National Geographic has to say about this issue:
That’s not good, sir. Character matters. Big Bird wouldn’t have played it that way. Do you really believe that Pennsylvania Avenue is that far away from Sesame Street?
Of course, the NYT is a Jewish liberal bastion, and National Geographic is full of coloured foreigners – and btw, Charles M Blow is a coloured person. This might be a good moment to mention the picture I saw yesterday of a demonstration in the US, where Romney supporters from some ultra-right group had a sign saying, ‘I’m dreaming of a white President, just like the ones we used to know…’ Yes, it’s true.
So let’s call a spade a spade. Romney didn’t hit at Masterpiece Theatre, he hit at Sesame Street. And once we’ve learned how to say ‘spade’, and how to spell it, we can give Mitt Romney his very own shovel to dig with.
N.b., Billions of pounds of contracts were signed the other day for private companies to run health care services here in the UK. And something like every single Cabinet Minister in the Con-Dems has business interests that will benefit from privatising the healthcare system. Who’s going to dig that?
Oh, and by the way, my brother is now a registered nurse. He is a big, burly, macho hospital nurse.
Every day he works hard to help people. He goes to work in his car. And his car has a name. Here’s a picture of his car. Can you guess what it’s called?
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The bird is the word. I’m feeling slightly nervous after Obama’s surprisingly unassured performance in the first debate, but at least the latest unemployment figures have given his campaign a boost.
Finally, someone has the courage to Call It’s Name! Call a Spade a Spade, and know that if the Repugs in, the economic divide will widen and deepen.
A fine posting with a story I had all but forgotten! A couple of outrageously fascinating points for those interested:
1) The picture of Big Bird above was taken at the truck stop where my blushing bride and I had our first significant moment. (Very auspicious!) And we were on our way to:
2) Bread & Puppet Theater (a political theater in Northern Vermont that uses large puppets and obscure metaphor) every year would put on an extravagant weekend performance with a dozen or so side-shows and one end-of-day pageant. We would attend every year and camp out in a local pasture-cum-campground with several friends, and thousands of strangers. Many campsites had a theme. We named our campsite Sesame Street, and decorated accordingly. There is photographic evidence someplace….
“So let’s call a spade a spade. Romney didn’t hit at Masterpiece Theatre, he hit at Sesame Street. And once we’ve learned how to say ‘spade’, and how to spell it, we can give Mitt Romney his very own shovel to dig with.”
Oh yes. Oh yes, indeed.