Big Bird from Sesame Street just announced on Twitter that he’s been vaccinated against COVID-19, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive:
Your 2021 Republican Party, ladies and gentlemen.
This thread has been getting a lot of attention:
Sir, this is Mr. Hooper’s store.
This actually reminded me to go way, way back into the Rigid Thinking archive, and bring up one of my older pieces, from 1983, when the Chevy Cavalier was showing the Japanese how it’s done, and Men at Work bestrode the music world like a colossus…
I’ve complained for quite some time about TV shows aimed at young viewers trying to undermine us and indoctrinate our kids, and this week’s episode of the popular NBC sitcom Diff’rent Strokes really crossed a line.
I hear you asking, “What’chu talkin ‘bout, Damian?” I’m talking about the very special episode with the owner of a bicycle shop who befriends Arnold and his friend Dudley:
Look, I am absolutely not saying that if a weird guy who looks like the WKRP station manager tells your kids to hang out at his place and drink wine and have shirtless photo shoots, that your kids should do that. Don’t get me wrong.
But I think this is the kind of thing that should be left to parents to discuss with their kids instead of Hollywood giving them the message that their parents are ignorant and don’t know anything. Next thing you know, Diff’rent Strokes will go full jackboot and have the First Lady telling kids to say no to drugs, instead of respecting their freedom to do their own research and make their own choices.
And then the line between entertainment and government propaganda will have been erased forever. Can you believe what a totalitarian hellscape that would be?
Okay, I’ll give @politicalmath this much: Captain Planet really was some creepy anvilicious propaganda. And that infamous Diff’rent Strokes episode inadvertently taught children that they were primarily in danger of molestation from strangers when the greatest risk, sadly, comes from family members.
But children’s TV shows teaching lessons about safety and public health isn’t new at all. Even Big Bird himself has been promoting childhood vaccination for years:
I suppose I could go the Tom Nichols route and say that this Twitter nontroversy is the latest example of how we’ve become a decadent, unserious society. Maybe.
But it might also be that the paranoid have always been with us, and it’s only now that they can broadcast it to the whole world.
Sesame Street is actually doubling down on promoting COVID-19 vaccination, and good for them. It’s not enough for me to forgive them for callously firing the legendary Roosevelt Franklin, but it’s a start.