No More Cookies For This Monster

Yes, after a long, long hiatus I am back.

And what has awoken me from my non-publishing slumber? News that Cookie Monster will no longer be Cookie Monster.

According to NPR ,among other news sources, in the new season of Sesame Street, Cookie Monster will no longer be the cookie scarfing furry blue monster that we all grew up with. Apparently, parents, teachers, and TV programmers feel the need to blame the growing rates of child obesity on what is basically a hand puppet.

Bravo.

The time honored song "C Is For Cookie", a song that subtlely taught children that the letter "c" can sometimes sound like a "k", will be no more. In it's place he'll sing what I can only imagine will be a condescendingly pedantic new tune called "A Cookie is a sometimes food", since you only eat cookies "sometimes". Although I have not yet heard this marvelous new song, I have little faith in it's ability to enchant the way Cookie Monster's original theme song did.

I wonder if parents and TV programmers alike didn't stop and think of other solutions. Have generations of children watched Cookie Monster farcically shove mountains of chocolate chip cookies into his obviously fake mouth and believed that that is the proper diet to adopt as they grew up? Let's push aside the idea that maybe children are smarter than that and just see if there is another, better solution to the problem.

Not that I honestly believe that the C. Monster should bear the burden of the years of highly sugared cereals, snacks full of carbohydrates and corn syrup, and an overall sedentary lifestyle that do actually make a child obese, but let's just say for the sake of argument that you want to think that way. If parents are really so concerned about what their children are watching, then perhaps they should take a more active role in discussing the content of what their kids watch with them. Counteract the negative aspects of Cookie Monster's personality by making sure YOU tell your children that cookies aren't to be eaten 24-7; YOU show through example that foods such as fruits and vegetables can be just as delicious as that oreo cookie. Then, if the talks and examples don't work, then maybe it would be time to think about changing the hand puppet.

It was bad enough we had to suffer through the Conservatives ranting and raving that Bert and Ernie were living in sin. While we need to give kids the benefit of the doubt, we also need to acknowledge their innocence. Bert and Ernie were never some hot and sweaty homosexual twosome, but a couple of friends who shared an apartment and were always arguing over boring it was to collect bottlecaps. Cookie Monster has never been a role model for kids to look up to and copy by eating box upon box of cookies. He has been a silly monster whose crazy cookie-eating-antics were always funnier than they were admirable.

I say, deal with childhood obesity in the home and at school, and let our buddy Cookie Monster have his cookies and eat them too.