The Historical Politics of Sesame Street

Okay, this is only tangentially related to the intersection of motherhood and media, but some days you just have to stop everything and do a historical analysis of the social politics in a beloved children's public television show...

So, this post started because a weird sort of synergy occurred in these past twenty-four hours between my personal life and US national political news: in both arenas, Sesame Street became a point of serious debate. 

In my personal life, it started with celebrating my husband's birthday. During a discussion with friends and family about our various concerns about recent weight gain and struggles with healthy eating (while also fighting our desire for seconds of the delicious birthday treats available... we all lost that fight, for the record), someone mentioned Cookie Monster. My husband then joked about the "recent changes" to Cookie Monster, and laughed that he personally rejected the recent attempts by Sesame Street to curb Cookie Monster's ravenous desire for sweets. Essentially, #NotMyCookieMonster, he declared.

I was borderline incredulous. Recent changes? With the passion I reserve strangely and uniquely for 'things I vividly remember from childhood media,' I insisted that the change to Cookie Monster was not recent at all! You see, I distinctly recalled a very annoying rap song from 1980's Sesame Street where Cookie Monster sang about loving to eat healthy foods and not just cookies. 

"No, I'm pretty sure it's a new change," my husband replied. "I remember the debate in the news when it changed too. He was all about over-eating cookies when we were kids, but now it's a whole message about moderation." He laughed and added, before taking another bite of cake, "Personally, I think it goes against his whole character." 

It turns out, we were both a bit correct; the bizarre earworm of a rap song that I recalled did exist in the 1980's Sesame Street show, but it was a bit of a one-off; throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Cookie Monster was definitely shown much more often as being so desperate for every last cookie crumb and morsel that he'd practically attack other Muppets, Monsters, or human actors near him and even eat the cookie container as well. 

Then in either 2004 or 2005, depending on the source I found, national concerns about childhood obesity caused Sesame Street to curtail some of those aspects of Cookie Monster and introduce the phrase: "Cookies are a sometimes food."

I still feel this is a minor change, but several news stories from 2005 certainly depicted it as a drastic shift. If nothing else, it was a deliberate decision by Sesame Street to (at least slightly) change the famous blue monster's framing and support a wider message about "healthy eating." 

That was my personal debate over Sesame Street from last night. Then I woke up this morning, and all over national political news today was a controversy over a tweet from Big Bird. 

Now, I'm personally not sure how many small children follow Sesame Street characters on social media (I mean... seriously... how many preschoolers are spending time on Twitter?), but the news that Big Bird "shared" with his fans was: "I got the Covid-19 vaccine today! My wing is feeling a little sore, but it'll give my body an extra protective boost that keeps me and others healthy.” 

In response, many people, including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, accused the fictional bird (and the show in general) of spreading "government propaganda" to children and bemoaned this new politicization of the beloved children's show.

Now, I'm not here to argue that those who gasped in shock over either Cookie Monster's shift on binge cookie eating or who feel that Big Bird announcing that he got a COVID-19 vaccine is a kind of propaganda are wrong. In fact, I think that they're right to a point: those decisions are deliberate social and political choices. However, the question I kept returning to was: 'Is this politicization of Sesame Street and children's educational media a NEW phenomenon?'

After both doing some further research and thinking about the purpose of children's educational media on public television in general, I've come to a pretty clear conclusion: No, it's not new. Not in the slightest. 

Part of that resounding 'NO' is simply that any educational media has to decide what specific things it is going to teach to children, and (if school board fights and op-eds over school curriculum are any indicator) what to teach and how to teach it has just about always been a hotly debated question.  However, PBS educational shows especially have not been new on the scene to take potentially controversial political and social stances, and Sesame Street is a recurring example. 

From hosting a televised summit on racism in 2020, to introducing a Muppet whose family was experiencing homelessness in 2018, to introducing an HIV-positive character who also appeared with former President Bill Clinton in an ad in 2006, to having Ralph Nader explain consumer advocacy in 1988, to Rev. Jesse Jackson reciting his chorused poem "I am Somebody" on the iconic Sesame Street steps all the way back in 1972, Sesame Street has time and time again made the decision to wade into potentially controversial social and political topics. 

 (Note: Sesame Street has previously posted this video
to its Facebook page, but does not allow embedding on another site,
so this copy/video is an unofficial YouTube upload)

And, in many ways, this political nature of a show like Sesame Street was by design. As far back as 1969, the chairman of the U.S. Civil Service Commission John W. Macy explained in "Public Broadcasting: A Medium in Search of Solutions" that the (at that time) newly launched Sesame Street program was "directed at teaching preschoolers letters of the alphabet and numbers by using the commercial advertising technique of animation, jingles, and so forth," but that PBS shows such as Sesame Street were also tools to address "the social problems of America," specifically its "racial problem" (Macy 646). Not only did public broadcasting educational shows draw a large minority audience, Macy explained, but the shows also contained lessons meant "to help achieve racial understanding" (646). 

This lesson, Macy continued, was also a part of the celebrated program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Now, you may not think of Mister Rogers or his show as especially political, but in 1969, despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that was supposed to legally end sanctioned separation of races in public areas, many public swimming pools nationally were segregated by race, either in literal locations or swimming times. As highlighted in A&E's Biography.com, Fred Rogers "sent a deliberate message on the May 9, 1969, episode of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. During the show, Rogers asked Officer Clemmons, a Black police officer played by François Clemmons, if he'd like to cool his feet with Rogers in a children's wading pool. Clemmons initially declined the invitation, noting he didn't have a towel — but Rogers said Clemmons could share his." 

In 2018, Clemmons told one news source, "It was a definite call to social action on Fred's part. That was his way of speaking about race relations in America." 

These decisions, both on Sesame Street and on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, were controversial in their day, and Mississippi's Commission for Education actually banned some of these children's PBS shows for a time, apparently specifically because they felt that their political and social messaging was "too controversial."

So, it certainly seems that Sesame Street and other educational children's shows wading into social and political issues isn't a wholly new phenomenon. PBS shows and educational programs in general often have strived to address broader topics for children than just how to say their ABCs or count their 123s. In a way, it was even the originating goal of such shows and public educational programming in general. 

That's not to say that people aren't allowed to have strong feelings about what and how their child is taught. After all, what a child learns and how a child learns it is obviously something parents, teachers, and community members everywhere have strong feelings about on a deep and very personal level. And, as the 1960's rallying slogan always says, the personal is the political.