The PBS Talking Point: Has it Stuck as Well as it Seems?

[angus]

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Asks the hispanic mom next door

"would you rather that the government pay for your food stamps, or big bird."

"WTF is Big Bird?"

If she's a Mexican mom, she'll know Plaza Sésamo.  It's as popular as Sesame Street is among the anglophone crowd.  I bought my son a book called "Los insectos con Archibaldo" in Mexico so he could learn some Spanish.  (Archibaldo is what they call Grover, and Archibaldo has that same scratchy weird voice as Grover, except that he speaks Spanish.)  The Big Bird character is actually green in the Mexican version, with some colorful feathers on his head and he is called Montoya, but, at least in Mexico, they know that in the Yankee version his is yellow and called Big Bird.  Cookie Monster is called Lucas, Kermit is called René, the gay lovers Bert and Ernie are called Beto y Enrique, and Elmo, of course, is called Elmo, but his girlfriend Zoe is called Lola in the Spanish version.


Montoya:

[angus]

Also this is a show for 4 year olds. So I'm not sure what you mean by "normal kid"  I think most kids still watch because it's good TV and it's made for them.

True.  My son is seven and he thinks its so stoopid.  Won't watch it now.  I think at some point you outgrow that stuff.  He still likes Curious George, though.

Sesame was politically correct in 1972, by the way, and it was one of the few shows that really was, back then, but that didn't make it any less entertaining for the four-year-old.  I know I liked it, and so did most of my chums.  Electric Company was very politically correct as well.  The phrase "politically correct" hadn't occurred to anyone yet.  That phrase would make its debut in the late 80s, but certainly those two shows were very PC even in their infancy.  

Electric Company, incidentally, has become very, very weird.  It has evolved more than Sesame Street in the past 40 years.  And not in a good way.  For the uninitiated, here's what Electric Company was like in 1972:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFYMijdQ_sA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=3kuKcX8QrOM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEBxXNuEAjQ


For the over 40 crowd:  yes, Jennifer of the Jungle is the same chick from the Shake and Bake commercial.  I was so hot for her when I was four years old.