sesame street

The mainstream media seems content to focus on one aspect of my new book, Primetime Propaganda: its discussion of Sesame Street.  The UK Independent led off the publicity campaign for the book with an analysis of the children’s television show, and the left-leaning media quickly followed suit, jumping on the Sesame Street critique to push the notion that I was a Jerry Falwell-esque character seeking to locate gay Teletubbies.  This, of course, was absurd – particularly because an entire section of the book explains why the Teletubbies are not gay, why nobody should worry about Spongebob SquarePants and Patrick, and why finding conspiracies in children’s shows is a chimerical exercise.  The Left was attempting to paint me as a kook to avoid facing down the devastating tape I released of top Hollywood figures admitting to propagandizing through their shows and acknowledging that conservatives are discriminated against in Hollywood.  All the Left wanted to talk about was Elmo.
So when I appeared on Sean Hannity’s show on Fox News last Wednesday night, I joked about the media’s attempt at misdirection.  “Every kid in America is gonna hate you,” Sean said.  “You’re taking on Elmo and Sesame Street and Big Bird in your book.”
“I kind of wanna take ‘em out back and cap ‘em,” I laughed.
Naturally, the Left went nuts – mainly because many on the Left are already nuts.  The New Civil Rights Movement, a gay interest group, labeled my comments the latest example of “how flip the right is about violence and murder.”  A commenter at one prominent left-wing website even suggested that rhetoric like mine led to the shooting of Gabby Giffords.  George Soros-funded Media Matters focused in on Ken Blackwell’s comments on the Hannity panel in which he talked about how gender confusion is problematic – and then stated, “this kind of rhetoric that attacks the very idea of LGBT people being allowed to live as they are is all too common on Fox.”  Then, Media Matters actually called for a boycott of the network.