More Than Muppets: A Case for Sesame Street

I love Sesame Street. I love its puppetry, parodies, and positive messaging on educational and moral topics. It was equally entertaining as it was informative, teaching lessons of sharing, acceptance, inclusion, and empathy. It is everything that conservatives hate, which is why they’ve been trying to dismantle this television institution for decades.

In 1969, the Children’s Television Workshop debuted Sesame Street. The show combined puppets, live-action skits on a city street, and colorful animations. The goal of the program was to develop a piece of media that could be used for early education, preparing children for kindergarten.

The show was developed by Joan Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, with the help of Jim Henson and his puppetry expertise. Initially, Henson’s puppets would only be a minor series segment. The scenes on the actual street initially featured human actors while the puppets were on different sets. However, kids found themselves more interested in Henson’s puppets when testing the show. Thus, the puppets would merge with the human characters for the street segments of Sesame Street. The puppets would still appear in their own sequences as well.

Short animated segments would also break up the show. Most of them were simple songs and rhymes that taught essential concepts in a fun way with repetition. Some were also a bit strange. Did you know Batman was on Sesame Street?

Sesame Street was a crucial inclusion of PBS going forward because it showcased a balance for their future educational lineup. Most PBS Kids shows favor either one of two forms of education: Academic or social.

Academic shows are generally designed to teach one subject well. Square One is math, WordGirl is vocabulary, and Nature Cat is environmental sciences.

Social education shows are designed to relate to kids by featuring familiar situations, aspects of communication, and learning how to understand and manage your emotions. Mister Rogers’s Neighborhood was a classic example of this—his ethics of teaching about feelings carried on into the animated spin-off series of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. Arthur is also a strong piece of social education, especially for its willingness to discuss topics of bullying, tragedy, religion, and mental conditions.

Sesame Street is important because it combines both types of education. The lessons could be about anything from matching patterns to handling anger. It’s why it’s a bit aggravating when so many people feel that Sesame Street is only viable for teaching preschool academic basics. Some will often just say that all Sesame Street should do is teach numbers, letters, shapes, and colors with nothing more.

But this really ignores what makes Sesame Street stand out from other educational programs. Sure, the main goal did seem to be giving preschoolers a head start before kindergarten, but there was also an earnestness that came with such a show.

In 1983, Will Lee, the actor who played the shop owner Mr. Hooper, tragically died. Rather than casually write out this familiar character or replace him with a different actor, Sesame Street decided to address Lee’s death straight-on and boldly. Within the canon of Sesame Street, Mr. Hooper dies off-screen, and his death would be addressed in a rather profound episode.

The most emotional part of this episode is when Big Bird finds it hard to understand why people die. He thinks Hooper will return soon, but the adults have to explain that this isn’t how mortality works. This naturally angers Big Bird; he doesn’t understand why people must leave us forever when they die. Rather than offer an easy explanation of the existence of an afterlife or say that Hooper isn’t dead, the adults tell Big Bird that this is just how the world works. Our time is limited, but we can leave our mark and appreciate the time we spend alive. Those we love can die, but they’ll still be with us as long as we have our memories of them.

This was a genuinely sad and heartfelt episode because it unflinchingly discussed a complex topic that even adults struggle to understand.

But Sesame Street didn’t just make controversial choices on a whim, as much research goes into the show’s emotional communication as it does for academics. If an educational aspect isn’t working, it will be retooled or even scrapped.

In 1992, the show wanted to expand the character of Snuffy and feature his divorced father. One episode would feature Snuffy and his sister playing with their dad but returning to their mother’s house. Dad then had to explain again why he doesn’t live with them. It looked to be a very emotional episode, but the child test audience found themselves confused and frustrated with the material. Despite the pressures of some of the actors to release the episode, the producers decided not to air it as it wasn’t up to their educational standards.

But Sesame Street has only gotten better at discussing these tougher topics. Part of that is due to the resources offered through the Seasme Workshop, which are separate from what appears on the show.

In terms of understanding mortality, the workshop developed a special video specifically for kids dealing with the death of a parent. In fact, there’s a whole slew of Sesame Street specials explicitly designed to talk about complicated subject matters. This includes when parents serve in the military, parents have addiction issues, kids end up in foster care, and parents are incarcerated. These videos involve familiar characters like Elmo to make the message about handling complicated feelings seem less scary and easier to understand for a young audience still processing such tough topics.

I need you to understand this going forward: No other show does this, not to this degree.

Some TV shows for kids might address death or separation issues, but none offer a wealth of resources. Just looking through the Sesame Workshop website, I see that there are so many important and meaningful educational tools not just for kids but also for parents. This whole project is not just about teaching kids a few lessons but letting parents in on the process as well. And, most importantly, it’s free. You don’t have to pay for any downloadable and printable resources on the Seame Workshop website. It may not be free in the sense that it has the support of taxpayers, but, be honest, do you really think resources that help parents and children grow with better influences and lessons are a waste of money? Because this valuable education doesn’t seem like a waste at all.

Sesame Street has also always been about inclusion. The fact that the show was pitched as featuring black and white characters occupying the same street and being friends with one another led some Southern districts of America to refuse to air the program. But Sesame Street stayed committed to this level of inclusion and has only increased it ever since.

They’ve thought a lot more highly about our current culture and how to relate to it. I’m not just talking about their spot-on and mostly funny parodies, but also the introduction of new and relatable characters. Over the years, Sesame Street has included live-action and puppet characters who have been deaf, blind, wheelchair-bound, and autistic, and their most recent addition is a homeless puppet character.

Upon the news of that last inclusion, many people popped on social media to point out that Sesame Street already has a homeless character: Oscar the Grouch. And, yes, Oscar does live in a garbage can instead of a house or apartment, but there’s a key aspect of his character that a lot of people miss. Oscar lives in a trash can by choice and actually loves living in filth.

And you can understand why this is an issue if you want to represent homeless people, right? You don’t want kids to believe that homeless people end up that way because they just like that lifestyle.

There’s an episode of The Simpsons where Homer looks at a homeless man sleeping in a dumpster. Homer laughs and says the homeless man is just like Oscar the Grouch. The joke couldn’t be any clearer. Homer has a view of homeless people he has taken from television and inappropriately placed it upon an actual homeless person who can’t find shelter.

But Oscar was never meant to be an accurate representation of homeless people. His whole deal is that he’s a contrarian. He’s a counter-balance to all the wholesomeness of Sesame Street. He’s more or less the cynical comic relief of the show. He does not represent the homeless population for the obvious negative connotation.

There have also been some social media feuding about Sesame Street’s moves to include African-American and Korean puppets. Some people felt that the show didn’t need these characters built to show racial diversity because A: The show already had a diverse cast of human actors and B: The puppets don’t have races. The first part is correct, but the second part is categorically wrong.

There have been puppets featured on Sesame Street with clearly different cultures and races. Many old-school fans will be quick to point out the lingering character of Roosevelt Franklin. Roosevelt Franklin wasn’t explicitly identified as a black character, but he was posed as someone who was black and was a creation of Matt Robinson, the actor who played Gordon. Roosevelt would often speak loudly about a variety of topics when addressing a classroom, and one of the topics he liked to talk about was Africa.

Roosevelt Franklin, however, was one of the early Muppets that was discontinued. By the early 1990s, however, the puppet character of Rosita was introduced. Rosita is clearly meant to represent Latin-American culture, given that she comes from Mexico and speaks English and Spanish as a bi-lingual character. Rosita still remains among the regular cast of characters. So, having race and culture-specific puppets is not a new thing.

While these criticisms of the show tend to come and go, there’s been one persistent argument against Sesame Street by conservatives: its funding.

One of the more crucial elements of keeping Sesame Street going is funding, which has been a mixed bag over the decades. It’s always been a combination of government grants and private foundations, but federal funding has not been reliable.

Even as early as the 1970s, the Children’s Television Workshop struggled to secure federal funding. The lack of federal funds led to the Workshop pursuing licensing agreements to keep the production going. In the late 1990s, the show even went so far as to have a corporate sponsorship with Discovery Zone. This all seemed counterintuitive to what Sesame Street represented, as a show meant more to educate than sell products.

But what choice did the show have at this point? Making a show with such high production values and immense educational research placed in every season didn’t come cheap. And you would think that since this is a valuable and easily-accessible piece of education, the government should be funding it more.

It didn’t help that political pundits were deeply questioning the funding of PBS programming. Fox News would talk about how Mister Rogers made America look weak by promoting kindness and empathy. This wasn’t based on any firm psychological study or insightful philosophical theory. Rather, it was just that a bunch of brain-dead pundits who didn’t like a story where everyone got participation trophies wanted someone to blame. Maybe Mister Rogers is the culprit. After all, he promoted tolerance and empathy, and those are apparently traits that make you weak, according to these watercooler weirdos.

Sesame Street came into the crosshairs of the conservative news apparatus when failed screenwriter and political pundit Ben Shapiro wrote about how Sesame Street was left-wing propaganda. His evidence for this is that he spoke with Children Television Workshop producer Mike Dann, who said that Sesame Street was trying to target black and Hispanic kids that were having problems with literacy.

This is nothing new. That’s been one of Sesame Street’s goals since day one. The show didn’t just happen to cast people of color in the late 1960s on accident. There’s a reason that the show featured characters like Gordon and Maria, and it wasn’t just because they were the right actors for the job. But Shapiro frames this so that this need to appeal to a broader audience for vital early education is somehow racist.

It’s a jump so dumb that even he can’t admit it’s fully racist and instead calls it “soft bigotry.” He also got furious that the Sesame Street website had gender-neutral language and that allowing Neil Patrick Harris on the show to play a fairy was going to indoctrinate kids with homosexuality.

Shapiro then went on Fox News, where he had this exchange with Sean Hannity:

“Every kid in America is gonna hate you,” remarked Hannity. “You’re taking on Elmo and Sesame Street and Big Bird in your book.”

“I kind of wanna take ’em out back and cap ’em,” stated Ben with a smile.

Sorry, dear children. You may no longer watch your beloved Sesame Street, for it has been tainted with leftist politics. That is why Uncle Ben had to take Elmo and Big Bird out back so that he could cap them–This is really weird!

This is a grown man talking about one of the most long-running and important forms of educational television ever developed, and he’s joking that he wants to murder the characters of that show. I know it’s a joke, but it’s based on the premise that he thinks Sesame Street is teaching the wrong things with the weakest evidence possible. I wish I could say he’s backed off Sesame Street since then, but that’s a lie.

Bill O’Reilly also continued the conservative cry of defunding Sesame Street, and Jon Stewart rightfully mocked him for this stance in their big streaming debate. Man, remember when Bill O’Reilly was a big deal? He was like Fox News’s blowhard king until he got fired for being a sexual creep. Now he’s clinging to fringes of conservative news slop at places like The First and NewsNation.

O’Reilly might’ve been dethroned, but the bashing of Sesame Street continued. It got so bad that HBO bought the broadcast rights in 2015. And here’s where things get really messy.

It may surprise some who only know HBO for programming like The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, but HBO previously had a bit of devotion to children’s entertainment. Their most notable acquisition of the past was another Jim Henson production, Fraggle Rock, in the 1980s. They’ve also aired TV episodes and specials for Babar and several animated specials based on children’s books.

So, it wasn’t odd that HBO was seeking to add more children’s entertainment to its channel, especially since it didn’t have much to offer in the 2010s. It was odd, however, that they wanted Sesame Street.

Sesame Street always felt like a show that should always be on PBS since it had been there for decades. So, to now have it on HBO felt weird. This was a show built to reach out to educate and entertain young viewers in households of all cultures and economic statuses. How can the show keep doing that if it’s now on a premium cable channel?

The good news, however, was that Sesame Street was not leaving PBS. New episodes produced with the help of HBO would also air on PBS. The only bad news was that you’d have to wait nine months for those episodes to arrive on PBS. If this were any other cable show, that’d be understandable. It takes The Walking Dead about that time to go from AMC to Netflix. But this is Sesame Street we’re talking about here.

Sesame Street is one of the leading early education programs on television, and way more research is put into this show than any other PBS program. The writers and educators behind the program provide an extensive background on the relevant material they want to cover and how best to cover it. The standards for what counts as educational content on the show while still remaining entertaining are incredibly high, which is why there’s usually such a high turnover rate in the educational teams for such a rigorous process.

This much work is put into the program to highlight children’s shifting learning styles. The techniques used to educate kids in the 1960s are way different from those used to educate them in the 2020s. That’s why the show is constantly updating and restructuring to ensure that the material being presented is not only accurate but also effective at educating young minds.

And in nine months, a lot can change. The latest season of Sesame Street could contain some valuable new information that would be essential for kids entering kindergarten or experiencing something new as a part of growing up. Having such an invaluable series behind a paywall where there wasn’t one before is just bizarre.

Kids grow fast and there’s a lot that can happen in a short time with their developing minds. Should the kids whose parents shelled out to watch Succession really deserve the more updated Sesame Street than the parents who rely on the free PBS airings of the show?

It’s also kind of weird that HBO would do this since there’s little reason to hoard Sesame Street episodes. You could maybe understand if this was the only Sesame Street media they have, but that’s not true. HBO Max had a Sesame Street exclusive spin-off of The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo, one of the streaming service’s launch titles. A host of recent and classic Sesame Street episodes were also archived on HBO Max in a way that they are not on PBS. Warner Bros also initially planned a Sesame Street movie under this contract (which didn’t end up being made) that most definitely would not be airing on PBS anytime soon.

Among all this Sesame Street material Warner Bros has helped produce, the central show remains one of the most crucial to get out there to as many kids as possible. The Not-Too-Late Show is cute but there’s nothing all that valuable educationally considering it’s a wholesome talk show parody. I’m sure the film would be cute as well, but chances are it wouldn’t be as overtly researched for educational content as the show, considering comedy writers were primarily handling it.

HBO Max would later dump most of its Sesame Street projects as part of the great Warner Discovery purge. They deleted about 200 episodes from the service and removed the Not-Too-Late Show. Why not just hand everything over to PBS? They did, after all, release the Not-Too-Late Show to the service.

A similar situation happened with the Charlie Brown specials. For many decades, A Charlie Brown Christmas became a staple of network airings every Christmas. The special would run on some major network in December every year for over 50 years. But in 2020, the unthinkable happened. Apple bought all the rights to all Charlie Brown and Peanuts specials and refused to air them on network television.

While Apple retains the streaming rights, it did have to make A Charlie Brown Christmas available for free on its Apple+ streaming service for a three-day window during December. With enough pressure, though, a new deal was struck. Not only would A Charlie Brown Christmas be available for free on Apple+ without a subscription, but the special would also air on PBS stations. That’s probably the best thing that could happen to this special. While it’s not prominent on network television, it is featured on PBS without commercial interruption. So the tradition lived on…until 2022, when they stopped doing it for some reason.

We shouldn’t let that same thing happen to Sesame Street, but it’s too late. Something much worse happened!

Amid the Warner Bros/Discovery merger, the studio just seems to be dumping everything. HBO Max turned into Max, the name change fitting how the service now offers about half of what it promised. They’ve scaled back on everything from reruns to exclusive films. And with Sesame Street’s contract due to expire, Warner Bros didn’t renew it.

So, now that Seasme Street is no longer seen as profitable for Warner Bros, they will just toss it aside. Sorry, early educational material has been invaluable for over 50 years, but times are tough, and you have to go.

What’s even worse is now that Sesame Street doesn’t have the full backing of either public or private funding, it’s now at its most vulnerable. Given how much Republicans seem to gut everything from health care to social security as of late, conservatives are now going to dismantle Sesame Street. This is a vendetta they’ve had for the longest time. Because they don’t see Sesame Street as an important educational resource, they just see it as a TV show indoctrinating children that taxpayers are paying for.

Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene declared that PBS was sexualizing and grooming children and that the values being promoted by shows like Sesame Street were really communist. This type of language is not new. Sesame Street has been accused of being communist multiple times, dating as far back as the 1970s and as recently as 2021, when Arizona Senator Wendy Rogers got all pissy about Big Bird encouraging vaccinations, with Ted Cruz chiming in louder. Sesame Street talking about vaccinations isn’t new either. Here’s footage of Big Bird encouraging vaccinations from an episode in 1972.

Conservatives have long criticized Sesame Street because it represents everything that they hate. They don’t want media that promotes empathy because that makes it harder to support bigoted views on trans rights and immigration. They don’t like the values of sharing extolled because that runs counter to the greedy ambitions of the capitalist structure from which they benefit the most. They don’t like the diversity and inclusion of the cast because that presence means their mean-spirited, punch-down punchlines will be seen more explicitly for the cruelty. They don’t like that an entire generation will grow up learning by association that the entire foundation of the current Republican party is wrong, not through vocal political stances but general values of education and kindness.

The easy way to stop all that progressive talk and thinking is to control the conversation by cutting off the lessons at their source. Gutting Sesame Street means destroying a critical piece of early education, ensuring that an entire generation won’t have a moral compass or informed outlook of how the world should be better. And as quickly as the kids will learn that 2+2=4, they might also realize that people like Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the problem and that they shouldn’t have all that money and power.

Sesame Street’s future is uncertain at this point. It might be purchased by another corporation and find a new home on streaming. If that happens, I hope the show will still be available on PBS. This vital show must live on more than any other children’s show. Generations of families have grown up with its influence and taken advantage of the resources made under the Sesame Street brand. None of this should stop because another batch of pissy Republicans think that the concepts of empathy and sharing are communism via puppetry.

Sesame Street is more than just Muppets. It’s about keeping people educated with invaluable resources for improving people and creating a better world. As Jon Stewart made the case for PBS in his debate with O’Reilly, he remarked that it is one of the best investments in using television for educational purposes. It’s also why conservatives hate the shit out of it, because they hate to live in a world where Elmo and Big Bird make more sense than the bitching and moanings of Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene. Elmo and Big Bird will continue to live on as arbiters of early education while Cruz and Greene will inevitably fade into the pit of the other Republicans who tried to silence Sesame Street.

Hopefully, Sesame Street will live on, even if such an institution requires more directions on how to get to that comforting urban location.