Puppet obsessives have lost the plot over Bert and Ernie’s imaginary sex lives
YOU know the world is mad when Twitter and major news outlets go into meltdown over puppets’ sex lives, writes Rita Panahi.
Rita Panahi
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CAN you remember how, back in the 1980s, we had such high hopes for the future? Back then we imagined that by the 21st century we’d all have flying cars and be finding cures for cancer.
Instead, in 2018, we are debating the sexual proclivities of puppets featured on children’s television.
Sesame Street, a program aimed at preschoolers, is the latest children’s TV offering to fall foul of the soldiers of the progressive movement. Confirmation that the program’s supposedly homosexual couple, Bert and Ernie, were just good friends made worldwide news, as outraged LGBTIQA+ activists expressed their dismay.
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The Guardian delivered the devastating news to its audience, many of whom seem heavily invested in the sexual preferences of puppets, with this headline: “Sesame Street disputes writer’s claim that Bert and Ernie are gay.”
The Washington Post’s headline read: “Sesame Street once again shuts down speculation over Bert and Ernie’s sexual orientation”.
The Sydney Morning Herald, true to form, refused to accept reality: “Sesame Street writer confirms Bert and Ernie are a gay couple.” Vox’s The Verge published a similarly delusional piece: “Why it matters that Bert and Ernie are gay, which they are”.
Some advice: if you ever find yourself obsessed with the imaginary sexual lives of puppets, then waste no time in seeking professional help in determining where you have gone wrong in your life.
The latest trouble started, as it often does, on Twitter, where Bert’s creator, the famous puppeteer, director and actor Frank Oz, posted: “It seems Mark Saltzman (a former Sesame Street writer) was asked if Bert & Ernie are gay. It’s fine that he feels they are. They’re not, of course. But why that question? Does it really matter? Why the need to define people as only gay? There’s much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness.”
And he said: “I created Bert. I know what and who he is.”
The immediate response from the Twitter cesspit, inhabited by hopelessly broken souls who think they’re saving the world one lynch mob at a time, was ferocious. The comment was deemed to be a veiled attack on the non-heteronormative community.
Indeed, Oz was accused of being “disgusted” by homosexuality, which he denied, But alas, the online mob smelt blood and intensified its attacks. Now the accusation is that he is a vile homophobe. One twerp demanded he come clean: “If you aren’t disgusted, why do you care so much about this? C’mon Frank, say it, ‘I hate the gays’ … say it, you know you want to.”
Oz’s bewildered response was a simple, all caps: “WHAT!!!!!?????”
Watching the drama unfold on social media, in between roars of incredulous laughter, it was hard not to feel sorry for Oz, who created not only Bert but a host of other much-loved characters, including Miss Piggy and Grover.
US journalist Jesse Singal summed it up perfectly when he wrote: “I love watching normies, even fairly successful and famous ones, realise with a start that they are no longer in Normal Person Land, but Twitter Land, where if you don’t think a puppet is gay the only plausible explanation is you hate gay people.”
Soon there was a statement from Sesame Street’s producers trying to quell the righteous anger: “Sesame Street has always stood for inclusion and acceptance. It’s a place were people of all cultural and backgrounds are welcome. Bert and Ernie were created to be best friends and to teach young children that people can get along with those who are very different from themselves.”
What utter insanity. We are talking about puppets in programs designed to entertain toddlers.
Anyway, it should have been obvious that Bert isn’t gay. Just look at the state of his eyebrows.
And why aren’t the progressive activists protesting against Miss Piggy’s predatory behaviour or the fat shaming of the Cookie Monster and Big Bird? What about the deeply “problematic” themes of popular children’s program In The Night Garden, which features a number of delinquent, dysfunctional characters who must be offensive to … somebody, somewhere.
There’s Makka Pakka’s obsessive compulsive disorder, evident in his incessant rock-stacking, going untreated; and don’t get me started on the way gross parental neglect is normalised with The Pontipines.
Although I jest, children’s TV programs are increasingly pandering to bizarre requests and political pressure from activists.
Sesame Street is no stranger to becoming needlessly political. And this month we learned Thomas the Tank Engine had been overhauled to appease “progressive” clods who have long protested against the show’s supposedly sexist overtones.
Several outraged pieces about the show appeared in Fairfax papers and The Guardian, until the producers gave in to the pressure and revamped it to feature greater gender and ethnic diversity among the, err, trains.
The lunacy doesn’t stop there. When The Guardian isn’t running pieces on bigoted children’s TV, it is promoting pimple positivity, last week printing: “Pimples are in — the rise of the acne positivity movement”.
It is becoming impossible to parody far-Left publications that allow activism to dominate their news coverage. The Guardian’s piece follows Cosmopolitan’s featuring a morbidly obese model, Tess Holliday, on the cover of its latest UK edition. What’s next?
Surely the activists won’t rest until Thomas the Tank Engine features a lesbian locomotive in a niqab that simultaneously celebrates modesty culture and female sexual emancipation.
The worst thing children’s TV producers can do is to give in to the angry mob.
Rita Panahi is a Herald Sun columnist.
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