As a person who grew up watching Sesame Street on TV, I always knew that Big Bird was big.
Like my father, who was also big. Or so he seemed, when I was a child.
But I caught up with my father, and ended up being an inch taller. Much to my satisfaction.
You could easily tell, however, that Big Bird would tower over my father if they happened to meet on a New York street in Big Bird’s neighborhood, which was a street called Sesame. Reportedly, Big Bird stood over eight feet tall.
Big Bird would tower over me as well, if we ever found ourselves standing side-by-side. But now that circumstance seems unlikely to ever happen. The Sesame Workshop — the production company that produces Sesame Street — laid off about 100 employees recently.
I haven’t heard if Big Bird was one of them.
I didn’t understand, as a kid, that Big Bird and his friends on Sesame Street were not only teaching the alphabet to children, along with some basic math skills — the Sesame Street puppets were also indoctrinating kids to hate Republicans.
Just like PBS and NPR have been doing all along.
According to Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who chaired a Congressional hearing a few days ago, PBS and NPR are “radical, left-wing echo chambers for a narrow audience of mostly wealthy, white urban liberals.” She was apparently contrasting this group with mostly wealthy, white urban conservatives.
She explained, in no uncertain terms, that public media was “grooming and sexualizing” children. This grooming was handled mainly by Elmo, but Big Bird was also in on the game, apparently.
How could our federal government could allow this to go on, since 1969? Like, for 56 years? Wasn’t anyone paying attention?
In one especially radical, left-wing episode, Big Bird had been laid off, and was looking for a new job. Like a lot of people are doing these days.
He was willing to work for food.
I’m all in favor of children learning to read, and I will grant that Big Bird’s cardboard sign — “Will Work for Food” — contains some important words. “Work” being the most important one.
But do we really want children to know that people are starving in America? Of course, we don’t refer it the situation as “starvation”, or “hunger”, because that would reflect badly on our society. We call it “food insecurity”, which sounds a lot more polite, and .
It’s a situation that adults can discuss endlessly, without doing much about it. Children, meanwhile, should never hear words like “food insecurity” or “hunger”, even if they are themselves hungry. Better that they remain ignorant, in my humble opinion.
The Sesame Workshop received about $5 million in federal grants last year, which was a drop in the bucket compared to its $170 million in revenues for 2024. But still, that’s $5 million that could have been refunded to billionaire taxpayers.
I suspect, however, that the money is not the real irritant among Congressional leaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene. The real issue for conservative Americans is the ambiguity around Big Bird’s gender.
The creators of Big Bird could have made things more obvious to us — and especially to children — by giving the character a gender-specific name.
Like, “Big Donald” for example.
Or “Big Melania”, for another possible example.
Then we wouldn’t be confused by the fact that the character is covered in feminine-looking feathers, but has a masculine-sounding voice. (But not too masculine-sounding?)
The Sesame Workshop has been perfectly happy, for 56 years, to leave us wondering if Big Bird is male or female. This is not healthy for children. Or for adults, for that matter. Especially if they are conservatives.
What are we to make of a children’s TV star who sounds like a man, but dresses like a woman?
I actually don’t want to think about it.