{"id":17270,"date":"2012-10-10T10:31:06","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T15:31:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=17270"},"modified":"2012-10-10T10:31:38","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T15:31:38","slug":"mark-steyn-loathes-sesame-street","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/10\/10\/mark-steyn-loathes-sesame-street\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Steyn “loathes” Sesame Street<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the National Post<\/em>, Mark Steyn<\/a> cuts loose on the sacred-to-American-childhood TV show (and associated toys, games, books, clothing, etc.) Sesame Street<\/em>:<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Mitt did in Denver. Ten minutes in, he jumped right on Big Bird, and then he took off \u2014 and never looked back, while the other fellow, whose name escapes me, never got out of the gate. It takes a certain panache to clobber not just your opponent but also the moderator. Yet that\u2019s what the killer Mormon did when he declared that he wasn\u2019t going to borrow money from China to pay for Jim Lehrer and Big Bird on PBS. It was a terrific alpha-male moment, not just in that it rattled Lehrer, who seemed too preoccupied contemplating a future reading the hog prices on the WZZZ Farm Report to regain his grip on the usual absurd format, but in the sense that it indicated a man entirely at ease with himself \u2014 in contrast to wossname, the listless sourpuss staring at his shoes.<\/p>\n

Yet, amidst the otherwise total wreckage of their guy\u2019s performance, the Democrats seemed to think that Mitt\u2019s assault on Sesame Street<\/em> was a misstep from whose tattered and ruined puppet-stuffing some hay is to be made.<\/p>\n

\u201cWOW!!! No PBS!!! WTF how about cutting congress\u2019s stuff leave big bird alone,\u201d tweeted Whoopi Goldberg. Even the President mocked Romney for \u201cfinally getting tough on Big Bird\u201d \u2014 not in the debate, of course, where such dazzling twinkle-toed repartee might have helped, but a mere 24 hours later, once the rapid-response team had directed his speechwriters to craft a line, fly it out to a campaign rally, and load it into the prompter, he did deliver it without mishap.<\/p>\n

Unlike Mitt, I loathe Sesame Street<\/em>. It bears primary responsibility for what the Canadian blogger Binky calls the de-monsterization of childhood \u2014 the idea that there are no evil monsters out there at the edges of the map, just shaggy creatures who look a little funny and can sometimes be a bit grouchy about it because people prejudge them until they learn to celebrate diversity and help Cranky the Friendly Monster go recycling. That is not unrelated to the infantilization of our society. Marinate three generations of Americans in that pabulum and it\u2019s no surprise you wind up with unprotected diplomats dragged to their deaths from their \u201csafe house\u201d in Benghazi. Or as J. Scott Gration, the president\u2019s special envoy to Sudan, said in 2009, in the most explicit Sesamization of American foreign policy: \u201cWe\u2019ve got to think about giving out cookies. Kids, countries \u2014 they react to gold stars, smiley faces, handshakes.\u201d The butchers of Darfur aren\u2019t blood-drenched machete-wielding genocidal killers but just Cookie Monsters whom we haven\u2019t given enough cookies. I\u2019m not saying there\u2019s a direct line between Bert & Ernie and Barack & Hillary \u2026 well, actually I am.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the National Post, Mark Steyn cuts loose on the sacred-to-American-childhood TV show (and associated toys, games, books, clothing, etc.) Sesame Street: That\u2019s what Mitt did in Denver. Ten minutes in, he jumped right on Big Bird, and then he took off \u2014 and never looked back, while the other fellow, whose name escapes me, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[158,374,188,806,101],"class_list":["post-17270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-barackobama","tag-children","tag-electionwatch","tag-mittromney","tag-tv"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-4uy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17270"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17272,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17270\/revisions\/17272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}