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E-mailCan 'Sesame Street' save the Middle East?
Eric Heyl is a Pittsburgh Tribune-Review columnist and can be reached at 412-320-7857 or via via e-mail.
You hardly can be faulted if you didn't hear the news. It was easy to overlook reports this week that a new program featuring "Sesame Street" characters now is being aired in Israel, Jordan, the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The story was blown off the front page after Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin was blown to bits by the Israelis. As one might imagine, Yassin's death seriously frosted his followers, who have vowed vengeance and made the assassination of Israel Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a top priority.
This means they might be too busy to catch upcoming episodes of "Sesame Stories," modeled after "Sesame Street," and featuring lovable muppets such as Elmo, Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch.
Given the locale in which it airs, I imagine the show's theme is stylistically faithful but topically dissimilar to the regular "Sesame Street" theme, perhaps going something like this (cue the music, please):
Hazy day,
The smoke just won't go away
See the scorched earth, feel the inferno's heat
This is fairly ordinary
Down in the Middle East
Try today
To stay out of harm's way
Warring neighbors there
On carnage feast
This is fairly ordinary
Down in the Middle East
It's a bloody, violent ride
Bombs burst doors open wide
Maiming people like you
Maiming people like --
What a dangerous
Hazy day
The smoke just won't go away
See the scorched earth, feel the inferno's heat
This is fairly ordinary
Down in the Middle East.
Sesame Workshop President Gary Knell told The Hollywood Reporter the show's goal is to teach Israeli children to respect Palestinians and vice versa. He admitted that initial reviews haven't been kind.
"Some Israeli reports accused us of being lackeys to the Palestinians, while another article accused us of being lackeys to the Bush White House and charged that Elmo was carrying the will of the White House to the Middle East," Knell said. "A Jordanian Internet site accused us of being Zionist lap dogs."
Given such an inauspicious although hardly surprising debut, don't be surprised if Elmo and company fail in their task. After centuries of senseless, ceaseless violence, successfully promoting Middle East peace is an order taller than Big Bird.
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