It's going to be an interesting four years. We have the feeling the stupidity is only going to increase with Donald Chump back in the White House.
As always, The People's March For Stupidity will be led by FOX "NEWS." They start each day. While the rest of us are sleeping, they're already up and running in circles chanting "Two plus two is five! Seven plus eight is three!"
They sport their stupidity.
Which is how you get the recent segment with plantation mistress Harris Faulkner where they attacked Michelle Obama because Michelle will not be attending the inauguration.
Faulkner fought for her master Donald Chump as she and the others on camera attacked Michelle.
At some point, the group realized their pants were unzipped and their hypocrisy was poking out of their fly.
That's when a guest, in an aside, insisted this was bad when Donald refused to attend Joe Biden's inauguration.
What?
Chump was the outgoing president when he refused to attend -- and he refused to attend after he led the attempted insurrection that, had the Supreme Court not run interference for him, could have led to execution by a firing squad -- which is the ultimate penalty for what Chump did.
As Faulkner stared at the camera with the pop-eyed look meant to convey sincerity but just made her look as though she had an untreated thyroid problem, we kind of pictured even a few of the FOX "NEWS" crazies thinking, "Why should she go when Chump attacked her?"
Because he did.
And that's not what happens with normal people, let's be clear.
"TRUMP ATTACKS MICHELLE OBAMA" -- that headline is from October of last year.
We feel sorry for Harrison Faulkner as she tried to whip up a frenzy over Michelle not attending -- we felt sorry for Faulkner because it was obvious she had failed at her job and would be removed as a house slave and sent back out to work the fields.
We also find it really typical of FOX "NEWS" to think they have the right to tell a Black woman what to do. Remember kids, if the TV screen reeks of racism, you're watching FOX "NEWS."
FOX "NEWS" exists to lie and trick and fool. Is that also what 'progressive' writers like Eoin Higgins are trying to do?
We're gonna see a lot of people who spent all of her campaign trashing Kamala mad that Trump is going to do exactly what he promised.
— Bobby Blue Velvet (@kleinman.bsky.social) January 18, 2025 at 6:54 PM
That's a fairly basic statement and there's nothing false about it.
But it was part of a thread that dared to critique Eoin's buddy Adam H. Johnson -- an IN THESE TIMES liar who's a political closet case just like Eoin.
They don't want to get honest -- Eoin and Adam -- about how they and their group of 'progressives' worked daily to tank Kamala Harris' campaign for president.
Eoin tried to turn his crowd -- he has none -- loose on Bobby Blue Velvet by reposting BBV and adding, "'Serves you right' liberalism is a scourge." He intentionally distorts what BBV put up which was a thread on the media that worked to attack Kamala -- excuse us, the 'left' media.
And not only did BBV say or imply "serves you right," but the true scourge of liberalism is when Socialists who loathe liberalism try to pass themselves off as liberals or, even funnier, Democrats.
What took place is history and how very telling that Eoin and others don't want you examining or discussing that history. Doing so might make it harder on their next efforts to destroy or punish the Democratic Party.
Eoin has a new book out. We're trying to figure out whether to waste our time on it.
Wasted time?
Donald Chump's going to be attacking NPR and PBS. Both outlets do great things.
We support NPR and PBS.
But there's a difference between supporting them and supporting stupidity.
As 2024 was winding down, we learned that SESAME STREET might be on the chopping block.
The knew jerk reaction is to holler, "No, no, no! Back off! Leave Cookie Monster alone!"
And were we non-thinking people, that's what we would have written.
SESAME STREET is a children's program created for PBS which began airing in November of 1969. Over seventy million Americans watched the program as children when it aired on PBS. In 2015, it switched from public television to HBO -- a premium cable channel -- with repeats airing later on PBS. Last month, HBO announced that, after nine years, it was dumping the program and that the season that just started would be its last on the cable network.
Time for the hand wringing!
Ken Makin (CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR) writes:
Whether this is the end of “Sesame Street” has yet to be determined. But for right now, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and Oscar don’t have a home for the first time in over 50 years. And one thing is for certain – the neighborhood is changing. That famous street is modeled after New York’s Harlem, and I remember being awestruck on a recent walking tour of those storied streets, full of famous brownstones and beautiful culture. For all of its majesty, it, too, was a scene under siege, worn down by gentrification and the auspices of capitalism.
I can’t escape the familiarity of such erasure, especially when it is tinged with the voices of children. I think about the collective groans of people who complain about playful youth at restaurants, or crying toddlers on airplanes. “Leave them at home” is rarely a viable option, but the more I ponder society’s views on kids, I’m left with an unfortunate reality: We are phasing out the fundamental needs of children.
Really?
No, that's not reality, it's a comfy little lie.
Warm and fuzzy doesn't pay the bills. And SESAME STREET is solely responsible for pricing itself out of the market.
Let's deal with what it is today, first off. This was a one hour program that aired daily with at least 200 episodes each season. That's what it was.
What it's become is a program that only makes 35 new episodes a year and those episodes are only thirty minutes long. That is an important point that we will be coming back to so stick a pin in it.
Remember the "Sunny days . . ." theme? They still used it. Not in the way you're used to. Instead a version that pops with percussion a la "Hard Knocks Life" in ANNIE, we get a garbage arrangement that drains the energy while, onscreen, we've got characters moving in slow motion. Cookie Monster, for example, crams a cookie into his mouth and then we go to slow motion as bits of cookie scatter around him or Big Bird leaping for some reason in slow motion or Elmo blowing bubbles with the bubbles going into slow motion. Does this show move along or drag along?
In one of last season's 35 episodes, Elmo talks to a book about needing . . . a book. "Didn't you know I was a book?" the book asks. Well maybe Elmo had the same problem the rest of us did -- No one understands what the book is saying because the voice is too low and the actor doesn't know how to enunciate when delivering lines.
Then you had the nonsense of Elmo visiting a library. Where was this library supposed to be located? Although not a mobile library, it was outdoors on . . . Sesame Street. Nothing to protect the books -- or computers -- from rain or the elements.
Well . . . there was a tree with leaves hanging over I AM MALA.
What world do they think they're teaching kids about?
The books young viewers of the show would be interested in? Blocked by props and structures. The display of actual children's books, for example, is barely seen on camera because it's behind a "CHECKOUT" blockade and a table with a computer on it -- presumable to check out books. While we're not given a look at that, we do see -- heavily displayed -- books for young adults.
The most heavily displayed book is I AM MALA.
What two to five year old is going to read that book? None. And two to five year olds are the target audience for SESAME STREET. To be clear, this is the adult version of the book -- check out the cover. It's not the 2014 children's edition entitled I AM MALA: HOW ONE GIRL STOOD UP FOR EDUCATION AND CHANGED THE WORLD. That's book, please note, was recommended for students in the seventh grade and higher. So it didn't belong in the frame even once. But what we get is the adult version I AM MALALA: THE STORY OF THE GIRL WHO STOOD UP FOR EDUCATION AND WAS SHOT BY THE TAILIBAN.
What a fun little title for two to five year olds, right? And it's featured prominently behind Elmo -- no other book is as prominently featured -- and then you see it behind Grover -- both when he shows up in regular garb and then when puts on a sweater to be a librarian. And then it's featured prominently again as they move over to the children's biography section. And then it's featured when Abby and Grover discuss books in front of six books now displayed in a different section of the 'library.' And when I AM MALALA is noted, Abby explains "books about real people." Over and over the book looms on camera despite not being a children's book.
RAPUNZEL is the most featured book on camera after I AM MALALA -- someone might point out. They would be correct. "RAPUNZEL" scrawled across a blank purple cover with no illustration. How are the young kids watching supposed to know that? They're reading already? Then they're too old for SESAME STREET. The third most featured book on camera? Hermia Melvilia's MOBY JANE -- no, it's not a real book but someone thought it was a clever joke -- a thought that hopefully vanished after the show aired but TV writers often cling to mistaken beliefs long after the audience has made clear that the scripts just aren't entertaining and, after all, isn't that the real lesson of today's SESAME STREET?
Elmo then sings a song about clapping your hands -- a non-melodic song about the letter B -- non-melodic and despite the clapping incredibly slow. "Read on the chair or read on the stairs" are some of the lyrics of the next song that follows. This slow and sluggish song, entitled "B Is For Books," appears to suggest that the makers of SESAME STREET believe two to five year olds are Quaalude addicts.
Okay, kids learned about the letter B during the episode. Did they learn anything else?
There's a whole long section that makes no sense involving onions. What exactly are they attempting to teach. Cookie Monster and a piece of fuzz with a male voice attempt to cook succotash. This requires them to leave the kitchen to get an onion. For some reason, they don't go to a grocery store but instead to a farm. A male farmer does a spiel about onions (they grow in the ground) and then he and other men begin picking them. Then fuzz and Cookie Monster go back to the kitchen. And start to cook. In what world should a children's program -- an educational one -- allow fuzz to cook when the stove is higher than he is? That's what we want to teach kids, go to the kitchen and drop ingredients into a pot you can't see into because it's on top of the stove that's already too high?
Apparently someone on the set that day had a bit of a brain -- if not any common sense -- because as the cooking continued, fuzz wound up standing on a chair next to the stove to cook -- as appalling as that is for an educational program, please note, no adult supervision in the kitchen.
This is educational programming?
When we weren't suffering through these bad live sketches, we were stuck with lousy animation. It's that computer animation garbage that killed MAD MAGAZINE when they tried to do humor on the cheap.
Another question: Why does the computer drawn Elmo only resemble the puppet Elmo? Why doesn't it actually look like Elmo. The nose, the eyes, the scale of the body -- it's all wrong.
Another 26 minute episode featured a 10 minute sketch about Elmo being afraid to go down a slide -- excited and scared are the emotions but why not break that long sketch up with one of the cartoons they showed later in the episode or the letter of the day (P in that episode) or the cooking segment (figs in a blanket) or the visit to the fig farm or the live action segment about visiting a play ground -- featuring real children only, no puppets.
Buried near the end of a long WASHINGTON POST article last month by Laura Meckler and Matt McClain was this key detail:
Warner Bros. Discovery, which now owns HBO and the Max streaming service, told Sesame Street at least nine months ago that it would not be renewing the streaming contract, which ends in 2025. Neither party would say exactly when the decision was made, but in March, Wilson Stallings said she had begun looking for a new home for the show. Examining its internal data, the company concluded that HBO — home to some very adult content — was not a destination for young viewers looking for shows like “Sesame Street.” (Warner Bros., however, did strike a deal to continue to keep past episodes available on Max through 2027.) The parties announced the decision this month. “We’ve had to prioritize our focus on stories for adults and families, and so new episodes from Sesame Street, at this time, are not as core to our strategy,” a spokesman said.
Striking a new deal is financially critical. Neither party will say what HBO has been paying for the rights, but Sesame Workshop’s program services income immediately jumped from about $23 million to about $45 million per year after the 2015 deal was inked, tax records show. And Sesame became reliant on income from the deal.
HBO paid them at least 22 million for the program -- $22 million a year.
And SESAME STREET is a weak ass piece of crap that can't even do 30 shows a year. That's shrunken from an hour to a half-hour.
The problem's not PBS, the problems SESAME STREET.
Next month, CBS starts airing the new soap opera BEYOND THE GATES.
Soaps used to be a network staple. What happened? 'Reality' programming and chat & chews ar cheap to make.
Soap operas used to be cheap to make. Then along came La Lucci. ALL MY CHILDREN's Susan Lucci was never the star that public thought she was. She never got the most mail of any ABC soap opera actor or actress. What she did do was be a witch on the set (Sarah Michelle Geller is not the only performer she tormented). What she did do was demand money, money, money!!! What she did do was sport her stupidity. Repeatedly. She mocked Julia Barr (Brooke) for sending out autographed photos to viewers who wrote in requesting them. She bragged that she'd never waste her time or money doing that. Well, no surprise, she has no real fan base and that's why her career ended with ALL MY CHILDREN.
As the 70s drew to a close, La Lucci made demands and used an offer from DAYS OF OUR LIVES to really screw the network over. And others followed suit.
Soap operas were successful because they were cheap to make. When you start paying a so-so actor like Susan Lucci millions a year, you're dooming the genre.
Today, GENERAL HOSPITAL, for example, tries to keep costs down by rotating cast members in and out throughout the year. But there was Susan being a pig in the eighties and doing real damage because if the so-so actress who wasn't the most popular on the ABC network's daytime TV line up -- and often even wasn't the most popular performer on her soap -- was demanding an outrageous pay check then actual Emmy winners and actual popular performers were going to do the same.
And they largely priced themselves out of daytime TV.
That's one of the things that killed soap operas. And telling us that at least 22 million dollars is needed for a public television children's show -- one that makes only 35 episodes a year and half-hour episodes now -- tells us everything we need to know.
How big is Big Bird's trailer? Where is the money going? It's not on screen and it's an outrageous budget for a children's program that really doesn't bring in that much income for old episodes.
55 seasons of this show is more than long enough. There is no excuse for that bloated of budget to make 26 half-hour episodes a year.
There is no excuse for so much of what is going on which is why need to be paying attention and using our voices. It's the only thing that might hold Convicted Felon Donald Chump in check over the next four years.
