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You could do worse. Instead of watching buffoons and insurrectionists on the tube, hook into the Web for vintage episodes of “Sesame Street.” We’re in for the long haul, anyway. Get prepared. I was reminded of “Sesame Street” recently when Sen. Ted Cruz, that vicious sack of goo, declared “Sesame Street” a public enemy for talking up vaccinations against Covid. Imagine trying to indoctrinate the kiddies (and their adult caretakers) about needles carrying life-protecting medication. I hadn’t thought of “Sesame Street” in a while, what with our grown grandchildren no longer needing our care. But the Cruz diatribe against Big Bird revived our love of early “Sesame Street,” when our children were young. Classic episodes came flooding back -- as real in my mind as scenes from “M*A*S*H” or “All in the Family” or "The Carol Burnett Show." One daughter – known as “Zingara” (Gypsy) to our Italian-American baby-sitter – would come back from kindergarten at mid-day (my wife was at work, teaching) and I would fix a plate of cheese and salami and we would watch “Sesame Street” together. I will never forget the spoof of a game show, in which floppy-haired host Guy Smiley offered a choice of prizes to the winners, Ralph and Trudy Monster – either a paid trip to Hawaii, with a new house, a new car, and ten thousand dollars in cash, or the second prize, a cookie. That sent Ralph Monster into an early-radio Jack Benny-esque cheapskate holdup dilemma. (“Your money – or your life?” “I’m thinking! I’m thinking!”) In the version I remember, Trudy Monster stood by her man. “I know you like cookies,” she said. What a wife. So he joyfully chose the cookie I will bet that episode was as graphic a view into the capricious heart of humankind as anything from Shakespeare or Toni Morrison. Wasn't that a time: Vintage “Sesame Street,” when Jim Henson and his furry friends were inventing a genre and public television. What riffs. At some point in the early days, there appeared a Rubenesque blonde who appeared to be another jovial member of the gang but in her actions and her statements she soon revealed herself as always, always, out for Number One. Miss Piggy. Another classic I remember involves one member of the cast blowing into a banana and producing a jazz trumpet sound. At that point, Gordon, the Black male presence on those early shows, turned toward the camera and, sotto voce, proclaimed, “a regular Miles Davis.” Something for the older folks. As the decades went by, “Sesame Street” produced an electronic trove of masterpieces, many of them on Youtube. Look at the one I found, with young Wynton Marsalis having a trumpet duel with a pure-soul feathery artist named Hoots the Owl. Playing for an audience of adorable kiddies, Marsalis is having a great time emitting his versatility. However, Hoots the Owl has one trick that even Wynton Marsalis cannot emulate. Dude can fly. Classic public television. I’m sure Ted Cruz, dead-soul schlub, hates it.
Marty Appel
12/17/2021 12:06:23 pm
Sesame Street has been wonderful…..but I think it is also responsible for our short attention spans!
George
12/17/2021 12:29:03 pm
Marty: Interesting thought. I would agree that TV contributed...but my guess is that Sesame Street kept kids (and me) on the same subject for more than a few seconds...and those skits had a theme...
bruce
12/17/2021 01:47:38 pm
marty,
Alan D Levine
12/17/2021 12:28:30 pm
My son, now fifty-one years old, watched Sesame Street, Electric Company, and Mr. Rogers every day for many years. He reads books cover to cover, watches baseball games from start to finish, and concentrates very hard at a demanding job. I don't think he suffers from a short attention span.
bruce
12/17/2021 01:54:22 pm
george,
George
12/17/2021 03:53:42 pm
I'll watch Aidy Bryant as Cruz....she gives him an upgrade just because she is Aidy Bryant. GV
Edwin W Martin Jr
12/17/2021 08:43:44 pm
In the 1965-66 era, we had good friends in the Bethesda, Md. area, and they were the kind of people whe kept ice cream pops in the freezer for neighborhood kids, they had no children, but Worked in education.
Ed
12/18/2021 02:23:45 pm
Hey, I forgot Fred Rogers, Mr Rogers neighborhood. He introduced a person with disbilities to the “neighborhood.”
Ed
12/18/2021 07:20:16 pm
Linda Bove Waterstreet is an American deaf actress who performed as herself on the PBS children's series Sesame Street from 1971 to 2002. Wikipedia
Altenir Silva
12/18/2021 05:42:03 am
Hi George: You did great writing about this amazing show. This wakes up our child lodged inside of us. In these troubled times, Sesame Street is an excellent antidote. In Brazil this show was titled “Vila Sésamo” and had the actress Sonia Braga (she made a beautiful career in the U.S.) I watched it during my childhood. I loved Big Bird (in Brazil known as Garibaldo, and Monster Cook as Come-come, something like Eat-eat.)
Randolph
12/18/2021 06:12:56 am
George,
Altenir Silva
12/18/2021 06:21:38 am
Sorry for my mistake. I wrote wrongly a curse word. I wanted to say Cookie Monster. Please, my apologies to all.
George
12/18/2021 12:57:28 pm
Dear Altenir: Thanks for your comments. I knew exactly what you meant, and I think it is charming to see you at 98 percent proficiency in a second (third?) language. So I'm leaving it alone -- proves you are not perfect. You've seen me bumble around in Spanish and French, at the baptism in Greenwich Village, to make up for not knowing Portuguese. You are so much better....
Altenir Silva
12/18/2021 01:38:52 pm
Dear George: Thank you so much. 12/20/2021 12:21:46 pm
What was great about Sesame Street was that it was fun for me to watch along with my kids. It was a natural way for them to pick up useful lessons..
bruce
12/22/2021 09:17:43 am
george, Comments are closed.
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QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online. The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal…. After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness. The progress stems mostly from three factors: First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot. Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.) Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year. “Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.” That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.” That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data. One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines. Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks. Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths. The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions. Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately Republican and white. Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.) *** From the great Maureen Dowd: As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop. But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels." --- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing. *** "Putting out the paper," we called it. Much more than nostalgia. ---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html |
