It might not surprise you that I couldn't sell this one at this moment. I've launched on the Muppets before.
Here for the Children
By Crispin Sartwell
Portrayed by Tom Hanks and the subject of award-winning documentaries, Mr. Fred Rogers stands "in this dark moment" as "a symbol of hope," a reminder of everything wholesome and sweet that we, the American people, lost in the last election. Meanwhile, the Muppets are back, selling insurance as only they - or at least only they and a CGI gecko or a live emu (oh, and Flo, of course) - can. I remember them well: Rogers and the Muppets were featured in the afternoon on the PBS station when I was raising small children in the '90s and '00s. No doubt Carmen Sandiego is still out there walking the earth, like Cain with GPS.
That Mr. Rogers and the Muppets - and the Magic Schoolbus, and (for all I know) Dragon Tales and (God help us) Caillou - are back is not surprising, because generations of children were basted in them. And it might not be surprising, either, that the nostalgia is particularly strong at the moment, when our politics and our media seem to many former and current PBS viewers to be particularly nasty. One thing is certain about the Muppets and Mr. Rogers: they are nice. Incredibly insipid, perhaps, but nice as the day is long: nice as hell, we might say. Far too nice to hurt you, or indeed amuse you in any way.
Meanwhile, PBS Kids is going strong, even though digital people have taken over from their furry or fleshly forebears. But the formula for such shows as Ready Jet Go! remains the same: every moment an improving message. Every character, every set, every line, each character has only, is only, a message. These shows are there to improve you, kid; they are didactic in every dimension, written, often, by educational theorists and psychologists. And only a churl would deny that human beings are better now than when Sesame Street went on the air.
The PBS Kids operation has been building progressive politics into repetitions of the alphabet and riveting dramatizations of long division and gravity for half a century now. Every color and tone of voice has been psychologically studied for its improving effects. A child, after all, must never not be carefully molded. PBS made the work of learning fun, sort of, or made the fun of childhood into work.
In my household, I did enforce an absolute ban on Rogers, not particularly difficult in that he managed to avoid the multi-platform merchandising that has always swirled around the Muppets, and which - along with their innovative 'intersectional' identities as puppets and marionettes - embodies their real cultural contribution. Rogers had already peaked by the '90s.
But kindness and sweetness and simplicity are never over, you churl, I hear you saying, and your (that is, my) kind of cynicism is just what Mr. Rogers was fighting against, insofar as he was fighting. He reassured us, taught us that everything was going to be okay after all. That the dialogue was indistinguishable from moronism is just what we loved about him most. And the monarchism that his puppets embodied was a misleading guide to his politics, for he was democratic to his soul, perhaps.
I didn't manage to banish Sesame Street with the same success as I got rid of Rogers, though I never bought any child a Tickle Me Elmo. In my house, SS counted from 1 to 10 continually, hectoringly, in a roaring riot of color (it was a controversial innovation when they went to 30) and retailed the alphabet to unsuspecting toddlers three times an hour for years on end. Today, many American adults, including my own children, can count from 1 to 10 and run through the alphabet. Perhaps we owe these things, like our insight into the many sorts of policies offered by Farmers insurance, or the profound cultural backlash that led to Donald Trump's presidency, to the Muppets.
