4 ms·

> There's a lot to suggest that Sesame Street is not the harmless quirky kids' show it's made out to be. If there's anything to suggest it, it's not in this ar

> There's a lot to suggest that Sesame Street is not the harmless quirky kids' show it's made out to be. If there's anything to suggest it, it's not in this article. The author seems to be angry that a children's television program was not designed as a vehicle for encouraging socialist revolution.

quacked 5y ago
That's hilarious, because I've recently been a little annoyed because I think Sesame Street was designed as a vehicle for encouraging socialist revolution. The designers of Sesame Street were open supporters of a great deal of collectivist and proto-socialist policies (look at Joan Ganz Cooney's Wikipedia page), and literally created a state-funded educational vehicle as their life's work. One of the key recurring themes of Sesame Street is "you should share what you have with others", and its implied pairing, "there's something wrong with you if you don't share what you have with others". To be fair, I don't know how well any of that worked on anyone. I watched Sesame Street when I was young and I certainly didn't retain those lessons. I think the more enduring lesson that Sesame Street unintentionally teaches people is "it's normal to learn things from the TV".
- WalterGR 5y ago
  I think Sesame Street was designed as a vehicle for encouraging socialist revolution. One of the biggest lessons I remember from childhood was sharing. One of the biggest. Kids are encouraged to share everywhere in the US. You can find hundreds of articles on encouraging your children to share in US parenting magazines. That hundreds of millions of children who grew up in the US were encouraged to share as part of some kind of sinister socialist plot is... fanciful.
  - secabeen 5y ago
    > One of the biggest lessons I remember from childhood was sharing. One of the biggest. Kids are encouraged to share everywhere in the US. I have seen a small amount of dialing back on this in the preschools my kids went to. Kids are encouraged to share, and they can't be possessive of a toy, but they aren't required to share, or to give up a favorite item to another kid. If kid 1 wants to play with a truck for a whole hour, that's fine. Kid 2 just has to wait, or find something else. However, once kid 1 sets down the truck to go on the slide, it's fair game to kid 2.
  - UncleSlacky 5y ago
    I recall a Fox News segment a few years ago (can't find a link to it now) about how encouraging sharing in schools would lead to socialism/communism.
    - quacked 5y ago
      I'm sure neither you nor I watch Fox News; I typically recommend people ignore cable news completely. What does lead to socialism/communism is the modern urban/suburban American lifestyle. If you grow up in a fully state-funded education system, have all of your personal outcomes controlled and motivated by government initiatives, and live in a city that is ostensibly fully controlled (facilities, transportation, construction, etc.) by the government, you start to believe that all good things come from the state, and you start to believe that all problems can be fixed by more legislation and rules, paid for by more taxes and enforced by state actors. I've been around too many disparate sets of people whose only understanding of how large-scale problems can be solved is "more government" to think that I'm seeing a phenomenon that's unique to my own experience. Most American citizens are disconnected from law, fighting, farming, construction, manufacturing, etc., and the ones that aren't usually range from weak to strong conservative.
      - UncleSlacky 5y ago
        Socialism/communism isn't "when the government does stuff"* - you should really read up on what they actually are (though given the US education system, you'd be forgiven for not knowing). *Credit to Richard D. Wolff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw&t=2494s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw&t=2494s
        quacked 5y ago
        Of course, my mistake! I only learned what socialism was just yesterday from a series of Tucker Carlson videos. Would you be so kind as to explain how socialism does not involve decentralized control of a set of resources by each individual member of the group, allocated through a codified representative legal system and enforced by members of the same group? I'm sure my underdeveloped American mind can't grasp any nuance past "government bad, company good"!
  - quacked 5y ago
    It's not necessarily sinister; if anyone organizing collectivist propaganda believes that what they're doing is good and virtuous, then it's just a regular plot. As for its efficacy- many, many young people today openly identify with socialist and pre-socialist movements. I suspect it had to do with all of the childhood programming everywhere, as you mentioned. If Sesame Street happened to be a part of that giant effort, it doesn't necessary make it a conspiracy, just part of a political movement.
- AndrewBissell 5y ago
  Is it your belief that the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation were trying to foment a socialist revolution? This is of course nowhere to be found on her Wikipedia page, but Cooney was a former US Information Agency officer and an alum of the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom. https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/1301200901538013185 https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/13012009015380131...
  - quacked 5y ago
    You know, I couldn't tell you. That's new information to me.' Here's what I'm wondering, in that case; if she is indeed a deep state plant working on behalf of the global-capitalist-regime-disrupting American "government" (which I do believe is an accurate description of USGov), then why participate in a giant push for state-funded collectivism, socialism, multiculturalism, and pacifism? Are you asserting that her motives were to serve the state by pretending to agree with the mission and central tenets of Sesame Street, or that her motives were pure but happened to be useful for the state? I'm not being snarky, those are real questions that I don't know the answer to.
    - AndrewBissell 5y ago
      There are kind of two questions in your comment so let me paraphrase and address them separately. Why would the USGov want to support a show like Sesame Street, with its left-wing perspectives of collectivism/socialism/etc? First, I would point out that while elements of "the government" are involved, this is not necessarily a government project per se that we are talking about. The Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation are private entities, but ones which exert a lot of influence including over the government in various ways. In the specific example of Sesame Street, I think that espousing ostensibly left-wing viewpoints can still work to their advantage if it allows them to smuggle in other concepts which blunt any sort of revolutionary thinking. Hence, you had early season episodes which were about making peace with urban decay -- the cracks in your walls as imaginary friends, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y0ffj__R4g&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y0ffj__R4g&feature=youtu.be "Official opposition narrative": https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Official_opposition_narrative https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Official_opposition_narrative Was Cooney a witting agent of the state/ruling-class or was she genuine but useful to them? It's very difficult or impossible to tell really. Generally, the way things like the Congress of Cultural Freedom worked was by first filtering for artists with a particular voice or perspective, and then subtly promoting certain perspectives, themes, and techniques for them to use in their artwork. This allowed the application of a great deal of leverage over the cultural scene without going to people and explicitly saying "we want you to make art for the CIA" (although I'm sure there were also more than a few witting agents).

quacked 5y ago

That's hilarious, because I've recently been a little annoyed because I think Sesame Street was designed as a vehicle for encouraging socialist revolution. The designers of Sesame Street were open supporters of a great deal of collectivist and proto-socialist policies (look at Joan Ganz Cooney's Wikipedia page), and literally created a state-funded educational vehicle as their life's work. One of the key recurring themes of Sesame Street is "you should share what you have with others", and its implied pairing, "there's something wrong with you if you don't share what you have with others". To be fair, I don't know how well any of that worked on anyone. I watched Sesame Street when I was young and I certainly didn't retain those lessons. I think the more enduring lesson that Sesame Street unintentionally teaches people is "it's normal to learn things from the TV".

WalterGR 5y ago
I think Sesame Street was designed as a vehicle for encouraging socialist revolution. One of the biggest lessons I remember from childhood was sharing. One of the biggest. Kids are encouraged to share everywhere in the US. You can find hundreds of articles on encouraging your children to share in US parenting magazines. That hundreds of millions of children who grew up in the US were encouraged to share as part of some kind of sinister socialist plot is... fanciful.
- secabeen 5y ago
  > One of the biggest lessons I remember from childhood was sharing. One of the biggest. Kids are encouraged to share everywhere in the US. I have seen a small amount of dialing back on this in the preschools my kids went to. Kids are encouraged to share, and they can't be possessive of a toy, but they aren't required to share, or to give up a favorite item to another kid. If kid 1 wants to play with a truck for a whole hour, that's fine. Kid 2 just has to wait, or find something else. However, once kid 1 sets down the truck to go on the slide, it's fair game to kid 2.
- UncleSlacky 5y ago
  I recall a Fox News segment a few years ago (can't find a link to it now) about how encouraging sharing in schools would lead to socialism/communism.
  - quacked 5y ago
    I'm sure neither you nor I watch Fox News; I typically recommend people ignore cable news completely. What does lead to socialism/communism is the modern urban/suburban American lifestyle. If you grow up in a fully state-funded education system, have all of your personal outcomes controlled and motivated by government initiatives, and live in a city that is ostensibly fully controlled (facilities, transportation, construction, etc.) by the government, you start to believe that all good things come from the state, and you start to believe that all problems can be fixed by more legislation and rules, paid for by more taxes and enforced by state actors. I've been around too many disparate sets of people whose only understanding of how large-scale problems can be solved is "more government" to think that I'm seeing a phenomenon that's unique to my own experience. Most American citizens are disconnected from law, fighting, farming, construction, manufacturing, etc., and the ones that aren't usually range from weak to strong conservative.
    - UncleSlacky 5y ago
      Socialism/communism isn't "when the government does stuff"* - you should really read up on what they actually are (though given the US education system, you'd be forgiven for not knowing). *Credit to Richard D. Wolff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw&t=2494s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysZC0JOYYWw&t=2494s
      - quacked 5y ago
        Of course, my mistake! I only learned what socialism was just yesterday from a series of Tucker Carlson videos. Would you be so kind as to explain how socialism does not involve decentralized control of a set of resources by each individual member of the group, allocated through a codified representative legal system and enforced by members of the same group? I'm sure my underdeveloped American mind can't grasp any nuance past "government bad, company good"!
- quacked 5y ago
  It's not necessarily sinister; if anyone organizing collectivist propaganda believes that what they're doing is good and virtuous, then it's just a regular plot. As for its efficacy- many, many young people today openly identify with socialist and pre-socialist movements. I suspect it had to do with all of the childhood programming everywhere, as you mentioned. If Sesame Street happened to be a part of that giant effort, it doesn't necessary make it a conspiracy, just part of a political movement.
AndrewBissell 5y ago
Is it your belief that the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation were trying to foment a socialist revolution? This is of course nowhere to be found on her Wikipedia page, but Cooney was a former US Information Agency officer and an alum of the CIA's Congress for Cultural Freedom. https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/1301200901538013185 https://twitter.com/paulkleinfancam/status/13012009015380131...
- quacked 5y ago
  You know, I couldn't tell you. That's new information to me.' Here's what I'm wondering, in that case; if she is indeed a deep state plant working on behalf of the global-capitalist-regime-disrupting American "government" (which I do believe is an accurate description of USGov), then why participate in a giant push for state-funded collectivism, socialism, multiculturalism, and pacifism? Are you asserting that her motives were to serve the state by pretending to agree with the mission and central tenets of Sesame Street, or that her motives were pure but happened to be useful for the state? I'm not being snarky, those are real questions that I don't know the answer to.
  - AndrewBissell 5y ago
    There are kind of two questions in your comment so let me paraphrase and address them separately. Why would the USGov want to support a show like Sesame Street, with its left-wing perspectives of collectivism/socialism/etc? First, I would point out that while elements of "the government" are involved, this is not necessarily a government project per se that we are talking about. The Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation are private entities, but ones which exert a lot of influence including over the government in various ways. In the specific example of Sesame Street, I think that espousing ostensibly left-wing viewpoints can still work to their advantage if it allows them to smuggle in other concepts which blunt any sort of revolutionary thinking. Hence, you had early season episodes which were about making peace with urban decay -- the cracks in your walls as imaginary friends, for example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y0ffj__R4g&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y0ffj__R4g&feature=youtu.be "Official opposition narrative": https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Official_opposition_narrative https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Official_opposition_narrative Was Cooney a witting agent of the state/ruling-class or was she genuine but useful to them? It's very difficult or impossible to tell really. Generally, the way things like the Congress of Cultural Freedom worked was by first filtering for artists with a particular voice or perspective, and then subtly promoting certain perspectives, themes, and techniques for them to use in their artwork. This allowed the application of a great deal of leverage over the cultural scene without going to people and explicitly saying "we want you to make art for the CIA" (although I'm sure there were also more than a few witting agents).