Speaking of Sesame Street

Did you see the story about Old School Sesame Street DVDs including a "viewer discretion advised" warning?

I caught myself just before grousing something about society going to hell in a handbasket. Whatever -- times are different now, and besides, my well-adjusted nephew and my well-adjusted friends' kids watch Old School Sesame Street and haven't turned into raving freaks (yet) so I know it can't be that bad. If people nowadays want their kids to watch sickly sweet Elmo - whom I despise - fine. I don't care.

I just wanted to share this quote from the article, because it exemplifies how I felt about Sesame Street as a child, and how I feel about it now:

People on “Sesame Street” had limited possibilities and fixed identities, and (the best part) you weren’t expected to change much. The harshness of existence was a given, and no one was proposing that numbers and letters would lead you “out” of your inner city to Elysian suburbs. Instead, “Sesame Street” suggested that learning might merely make our days more bearable, more interesting, funnier. It encouraged us, above all, to be nice to our neighbors and to cultivate the safer pleasures that take the edge off — taking baths, eating cookies, reading. Don’t tell the kids.