Die! Elmo, Die!

We saw these two several weeks back, during the non-stop swoon-fest over Sesame Street’s 40th Anniversary, and we just had to puke. Are we  the only people on earth whose bodies haven’t been taken over by pods and who KNOW that Sesame Street is evil and worse than crack? Forget the absurd studies (paid for by the Children’s Television Workshop--the billion-dollar mega-corporation that bankrolls Sesame Street), that claim kids who watch Sesame Street learn more about reading then actually reading; forget that, in response to mounting criticism (mainly from us), Sesame Street has long since abandoned its original jingle-based format and now, more often than not, resembles Barney (found by Yale researchers to contain more teaching elements than SS), forget even the adorably gay Muppets, and keep this in mind: since Sesame Street began nearly 40 years ago, illiteracy in the United States has risen.