'Sesame Street' vs. FOX News: The Real Source of Anti-Public Broadcasting Campaign?

First things first: This week, the buzz machine lit up with speculation that Bert, the single-browed longtime roommate of Ernie, may have winkingly come out of the closet as gay in a Twitter post. "Ever notice how similar my hair is to Mr. T's? The only difference is mine is a little more 'mo,' a little less 'hawk,'" the puppet tweeted this summer.

At the time, gay pop culture website AfterElton wrote: "Speaking of Pride, the people at 'Sesame Street' are way too clever for their own good. On the opening weekend of 'A-Team,' and Pride in many cities, they sent out this tweet on Friday confirming what we all suspected since childhood ... Being sent right in the middle of Pride Month, it seemed like a fun coded message to us 'mos, and one that I [AfterElton blogger Ed Kennedy] was happy to pick up on."

Little else was made of the tweet or AfterElton's take on it at the time. However, the story recently gained further traction in the press after the LA Times picked it up and commented that the show "feels more LGBT-friendly than ever." The Times rationalized its observation by pointing to recent spate of guests and musical numbers that could be read as advocating a pro-gay sensibility.

Openly lesbian comedienne Wanda Sykes appeared on the show in October, just one month after will.i.am performed 'What I Am,' a song about self-acceptance. Perry, who some consider a gay icon, taped an appearance that was set to air this season but was cut after it leaked onto the Internet and caused a stir among parents who felt her costume was too revealing. The show also featured a parody of 'True Blood,' a program with multiple gay characters and storylines and a loyal LGBT following.

For its part, FOX News has not yet cited 'Sesame Street' or its presumed LGBT-friendly stance in its calls for the elimination of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a non-profit entity created by Congress in 1967 and partially funded by the U.S. government to promote public broadcasting. The subject of its on-air ire has instead been National Public Radio and its firing of Juan Williams for implying that all Muslims were terrorists. (Williams has since signed a $2 million deal with FOX.)

According to the Huffington Post, "The Williams' hullabaloo has dominated the headlines, but Fox News and its Republican allies are hunting much larger game: Big Bird. ... Sarah Palin, Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Karl Rove and Megyn Kelly, among others, have taken to the air calling on Congress to wholly defund public broadcasting."

The elimination of the CPB is not a new cause; in 1995, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich led an extremely unpopular attempt to "zero-out" the CPB. At the time, Gingrich said of public broadcasting, "They are simply enclaves of the left using your money to propagandize your children against your values."

While the above quote originated in a Washington Post interview with Gingrich, it presently appears in a FOX News blog posting from Oct. 23 entitled 'The Rumble on Sesame Street,' which details the most recent attempts to see all federal funding stripped from public broadcasting.

Two other interesting facts from that same FOX News blog post:
►"NPR gets no allocation from CPB," according to NPR CEO Vivian Schiller; though, "its member stations get CPB dollars and sometimes use that to 'purchase' NPR programs like 'Morning Edition' and 'All Things Considered.'" (CPB dollars still represent a "fraction" of NPR's budget); and
►"In June, Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-CO) introduced a bill to eliminate all federal money for the CPB. The legislation gained little attention and went nowhere."

So, NPR, the alleged catalyst for FOX's fervent anti-CPB campaign, receives very little CPB money, and less than five months ago, legislation that would end federal funding for public broadcasting could not drum up much interest. Then why the sudden surge in interest in, as FOX News commentator Bill O'Reilly recently said on his show, the "immediate suspension of every taxpayer dollar" going to public broadcasting? Why the seeming reminder to its audience that public broadcasting is an alleged "enclave of the left using your money to propagandize your children," when such a statement has almost nothing to do with the situation Juan Williams found himself in? And if FOX News' issue is specifically with NPR, why does it have a blog post dedicated to defunding public broadcasting with a titular reference to PBS' 'Sesame Street' at all?

Could it have something to do with a certain Muppet whose hair is "more 'mo'" than hawk?

If you think FOX is above commenting on the presumed relationship between two puppets, that such a thing is so off its radar that it couldn't possibly have anything to do with the net's current anti-CPB campaign, think again. In 2005, O'Reilly himself compared an episode of 'Sesame Street' entitled "Postcards from Buster," which featured children with lesbian parents, to "a bigamy situation in Utah." It is also worth mentioning that FOX reportedly did not have much of a sense of humor about being parodied on the 'Street' as "Pox News," of which Oscar the Grouch's one-time girlfriend, Grundgetta, said, "Now there's a trashy news show."

For its part, 'Sesame Street' has denied that Bert is intended as a gay character and that the program is actively courting a pro-gay political agenda. Regardless, Jarrett Barrios, president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), seems pleased with the show's overall message of tolerance. "'Sesame Street' has a long history of teaching children about diversity and acceptance," he told the LA Times, "and I don't expect that our community will be left out of that education."

Jennifer Vanasco, editor-in-chief of Logo's politics and advice website 365gay.com, perhaps best sums up what some see as at the impetus for FOX News' campaign against public broadcasting and the CPB. "Those calling for the dismantling of public broadcasting – from 'Sesame Street' to NPR – consider it 'liberal programming,' when really, public broadcasting brings ideas into the marketplace that would otherwise get shut down from lack of advertising dollars," she tells PopEater. "They need to get over it. I may have learned my letters from 'Sesame Street,' but I certainly didn't learn how to be a lesbian."

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