New Book Tells How to Get to Sesame Street

Candidate says he'd stop subsidizing PBS

(NEWSER) - America is too broke to subsidize ad-free TV for toddlers, Mitt Romney says. The candidate, while campaigning in Iowa yesterday, promised to balance the budget by cutting certain programs, and by requiring PBS to carry ads, forcing Bert and Ernie and the rest of the Sesame Street gang to start paying their own way, the Raw Story reports. More»

YouTube channel briefly turns XXX

(NEWSER) - Sesame Street briefly turned into Sex-ame Street yesterday, when hackers apparently took hold of the children’s show’s YouTube channel and filled it with porn. The page was taken offline in the afternoon, CNN reports, but it appears to be back up today . The nonprofit Sesame Workshop apologized yesterday, noting that, "We always strive to provide age-appropriate content for our viewers and hope to resolve this problem quickly." The XXX material was available for at least 20 minutes, The Daily What notes. Gawker and Reddit have NSFW screenshots. More»

Lily will teach kids about hunger in prime-time special

(NEWSER) - Sesame Street has got a hungry, impoverished new character—and it isn't Oscar the Grouch or the Cookie Monster. Lily, a 7-year-old girl whose family often struggles to get enough to eat, will appear in the show's prime-time special "Growing Hope Against Hunger" this Sunday, reports Entertainment Weekly . The Wal-Mart-sponsored special looks at the issue of hunger, which affects an estimated 17 million Americans. More»

Backers of gay marriage hate idea: Opinion roundup

(NEWSER) - An online petition by Change.org to have Bert and Ernie get married on Sesame Street is generating lots of buzz but also plenty of criticism—including from those who support same-sex marriage:

• Nicole Fabian-Weber, the Stir : "Utterly stupid idea." Why? "They're puppets. They bicker, sing songs, and teach kids how to count. They—and the rest of the characters on the show—shouldn't be marrying anyone, girl or boy." (Whitney Jefferson at Jezebel has a similar gripe.)
• Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon : "They're close buddies who happen to be lifelong roommates—and in a preschooler's universe this is totally appropriate! It's only in the adult world of defensive, 'no homo' heterosexuality that their cohabitation becomes problematic and laughable." How about we push for more gay celebrities to appear on the show "and leave the absurdity of debating puppets' sexuality to the homophobes."

Online campaign urges Sesame Street to 'teach tolerance'

(NEWSER) - Big Bird could be best man. That's the image if an online push looking to join Bert and Ernie in gay matrimony is successful. "We are not asking that Sesame Street do anything crude or disrespectful," reads the petition at C hange.org . "It can be done in a tasteful way. Let us teach tolerance of those that are different." Sesame Street spokesmen insist the muppet pair are merely "best friends" with "no sexual orientation," reports the New York Daily News . They were "created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves," said a statement. More»