Cookie Monster, PC, and the Fall of Western Civilization

I have commented on a number of occasions about how Political Correctness interferes with people's ability to think clearly, and I plan to do some more extensive work on this in the near future.  Until then, for your perusal, a letter from my two middle children, who were rather distressed to find out that their childhood friend, Cookie Monster, has been effectively neutered by the PC police at PBS; they are trying to get people to write supporting letters to PBS to save a piece of their childhood:

http://pbskids.org/help/write.html

To whom it may concern:
We are Reed and Brittany ________, of Westchester, N.Y.  Although we are huge fans of PBS programming, we are writing about a very serious concern.  We were recently informed of a terrible travesty on Sesame Street.  When we were children we used to watch the show with regularity and enjoy singing along to the catchy tunes. Apparently, kids cannot do that anymore. Cookie Monster has ended his long time love affair with his favorite food, resulting in over-the-top P.C. lyrics.  It is alarming that anyone at the station finds this change necessary and proper.  Why have you done this?  We realize that your intent is to provide children with exemplary role models, but since when is Cookie Monster one of the role models on the show?  He is overweight and cannot even swallow, facts that were quite obvious to us, even as children.  To us, his place in the show was to teach us basic information via his humorous nature.  What's next?  A homeless shelter for Oscar?  Less Valium for Snuffy?  Our childhood memories of Sesame Street are wonderful.  Please don't ruin it for the next generation. Cookie Monster's lyrics are not particularly influential in the lives of children, rather, they are sentimental. 
We plead with you to revert to the original "C is for Cookie, that's good enough for me;"  it was definitely good enough for us.
Sincerely,
Brittany and Reed ______

Their humor contains some very serious truth.

For an explication of the Psychodynamic roots of Political Correctness from a point of view slightly different from and overlapping my own, take a look at this article by Professor Howard S. Schwartz of Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, Hysteria and Truth in the Politically Correct Organization: The Case of the Burkett Memo Debacle at CBS News.

Political correctness represents hysteria, a psychological dynamic that is inconsistent with and destructive toward organization. This is shown in the case of CBS News, as illustrated by the Burkett memo debacle. News organizations can do good journalism even though they are biased, as long as they operate under the assumption that there is an external world which their reporting can get wrong. Political correctness undermines that assumption, and in fact undermines the whole idea that there is an external world. In the politically correct organization, truth refers to correspondence with a fantasy, rather than correspondence with facts in an external world. Politically correct news organizations are not in the journalism business anymore. They are in the business of political correctness, which has become an end in its own right.

Comments

[AbbaGav]

What's next? Oscar will live in a pile of recycled newspaper? I fear for our children. Thank you for your brave stand.

[truepeers]

Shrinkwrapped, i enjoy your comments at RLS's and this post. For an interesting article on hysteria and PC, from the pov of a humanist, see this article by Thomas Bertonneau:
http://www.literatevalues.org/prae-2.1.htm#Anthropological

[truepeers]

OH yes, of course, your Howard Schwartz is the same HS that Bertonneau is writing about. That's why I made the connection of the common theme without realizing it at first!

[gumshoe]

"I have commented on a number of occasions about how Political Correctness interferes with people's ability to think clearly, and I plan to do some more extensive work on this in the near future." -SW

SW -

i have yet to purchase and read the following book,but it examines the post-modern,anti-rational roots of PC-Think in some depth:

Explaining Post-Modernism:
Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault
by Stephen R. C. Hicks

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1592476465/ref=lpr_g_1/103-3546903-9893433?v=glance&s=books

best-
-gumshoe

[Captain Wrath]

Good post, but the article you referenced by Howard S. Schwartz blew my freaking mind. I was a little skeptical at first, but reading through it, it is amazingly dead on. It explains alot, really. I am going to need time to absorb this...Holy...

[RAY]

My first reaction to the "fake but accurate" CBS memos was that they were unbelieveable. I'm a retired navy officer and when I saw the memos it was obvious that no one at CBS has any military experience. Scheduling of physicals is a routine administrative matter and does not involve the commanding officer. I was the administrative officer of a unit and told many people to schedule a physical. Typically a list of people needing physicals would be placed on the bulletin board and in the plan of the day. This wasn't a suggestion that they obtain a physical but an offical notice, and if they didn't do it, I had ways of making them cooperate. I didn't need any orders from the CO.

[Ardsgaine]

Re the article: Interesting thesis, but one could throw out the pyscho-babble and what would be left would be the assertion of Atlas Shrugged: the PC crowd are whim worshipers, powerlusters, and their ultimate, unadmitted desire is their own self-destruction.