Mrs. Obama’s appearance on Sesame Street not biased
Last year, conservatives waged war on Oscar the Grouch. When Oscar poked fun at “Pox News” and called it a trashy news source, conservatives said that Oscar was purposefully putting down Fox News, and thus showing a political bias.
This claim that Oscar was actually demonstrating a bias toward the political left wing is absurd. Oscar the Grouch is best known for his hatred of anything and everything. If Oscar were to express a liking for Fox News, or any news source, that would have been out of character.
Just last week, conservatives laid a similar claim, this time on the show’s decision to include Michelle Obama on their anniversary episode. This segment, “The First Lady,” features Obama talking about healthy eating. Her script includes such lines as “Veggies taste so good when they come fresh from the garden, don’t they? If you eat all these healthy foods, you are going to grow up to be big and strong. Just like me.”
To the conservatives, veggies must be a very political matter. Obama’s script never at any point goes near politics, and the fact that she was chosen to speak on the show is based merely on her role as the First Lady. Such a segment would include any First Lady of the time, whether she be from the Republican, Green, or Independent Party.
It is true that such a segment has never been created, but to lay such a biased claim on a show that must change content every day is unreasonable. The conservatives are just mad about Obama’s feature because the idea was never around when Laura Bush was the First Lady, said one blogger on jezebel.com.
Each day, Sesame Street writers must struggle to come up with new means of communicating messages of phonics, arithmetic, and growing up to millions of children. If they had to also consider politics when writing their scripts, their jobs would become virtually impossible.
Even if there were very clear political references on the show, which do not include Oscar’s poking at Pox News and Obama’s encouragement of vegetables, would the children really notice? The average age of Sesame Street’s target audience is aged three to seven. These kids are barely aware of what the word “politics” even means, and can’t even spell the names of any political parties.
When these kids sit in front of their television to watch Sesame Street, all they see is Oscar the Grouch hating the world, a soft-spoken First Lady encouraging them to eat vegetables, and just some good old sunny days sweeping the clouds away in their favorite television location of Sesame Street.