Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Snopes.com
Oh, the fun that is to be had on www.snopes.com..

I was first introduced to this site by Kazuko, back when the Lion King subliminal message thread was floating about, and found it rather intriguing. After reading through some of the Disney stuff, however, I forgot the URL and never went back.

But good old Kaz reminded me the other day, and I've been browsing it a lot. There are lots of interesting stories, and some of the more bizarre ones are true, but one particular thing struck me as most interesting..

Now, I'm not one to keep up with Muppet current events, but this is a particularly interesting character.

Well, that's quite interesting. They devised a Sesame Street character who is HIV-positive. They say that the character will help teach children to have positive attitudes toward people who have contracted HIV, but I'm not quite sure that's the entire message.



"The South African character has been named Kami and will be a female mustard-colored furry Muppet who likes nature, telling stories and collecting stuff. Kami is a "monster Muppet" like Grover or Elmo, the least human-like of the Sesame cast, said Joel Schneider, vice president of Sesame Workshop. The muppet will associate freely with the show's other characters as a way to fight stereotypes about people with the virus, said Yvonne Kgame of the South African Broadcasting Corporation. "

Now, um.. How are they going to teach these things to children? Is Bert going to talk to Ernie about the importance of safe sex and the dangers of HIV?

"So.. Ernie, is it true that one out of every nine Africans are infected with this disease and will most likely receive no surefire cure?"

"Yes! Now, I wrote a little song about this, for all you kids out there to sing with us.."

I'm sorry, but it seems a little strange, especially for little three-year-olds watching.

Why, AzureWolf himself just said that he would like to read some of Sesame Street's fanmail, just to see how many kids wrote to Big Bird (in crayon with cute, backwards letters) exactly how somebody contracts such a disease.

However, this is not a necessarily new trend in children's television programming. In fact, it has come to the attention of a specific group of people about the frequent subliminal messages in so-called kiddy shows.. Why, just look at Tinky Winky of the Teletubbies. He always carries around a man-purse, and seems to enjoy his "big hugs" with Poe a little more than with the other two, if you know what I mean.

And look at all of the evil that goes on in Pokemon! Why, the Pokemon evolve! This entails that Pokemon are subjects to Satan's right-hand man, Charles Darwin, and his evil and incorrect theories of evolution! Plus, the Pokemon hurt each other. And we know how bad it is to spray a purple mouse with bubbles.

There are many more examples, including Harry Potter, anime in general, and Teen-rated games, however. The list goes on.
So, this specific group of people decided to create an organization dedicated to burning books and circulating anti-stuff petitions nationwide. They are known as the:

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Okay, now I know that all was rather extreme, and what is stated above does not represent my feelings about any of the sensitive subject matter that has just been touched. I just felt that those parents who are too lazy to actually teach their kids the difference between right and wrong and compensate by sending complain letters to companies should get some.. Friendly recognition. It was all sarcasm.

EDIT: Wow, turns out they were planning on killing off Ernie to teach kids about death. That would have been worth TIVO-ing.
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