A few days ago, Fox News dared to imply the new Muppet movie is another example of pedantic liberal dogma. “Follow the Money” host Eric Boiling said, “liberal Hollywood depicting a successful businessman as evil? That’s not new,” to which Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center responded, “It’s amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message.” Despite these allegations being unequivocally true, the left mocked Fox and ran headlines such as “The Muppets Are Communist, Fox Business Network Says” and “Fox News Unearths Communist Muppet Conspiracy.”

Nobody said the movie was “communist.” That’s a lazy trick the left uses to make their opponents sound like a drunken Archie Bunker trapped in the Cold War. They said it had a liberal agenda. How can anyone deny that? The villain is a Texas oilman named “Tex Richman,” for cry-eye. Tex is determined to shut down the Muppet Theater because there’s oil underneath it. The Muppets almost manage to pay him off, but he keeps thwarting them by sabotaging donors and even blocking calls by knocking down telephone poles.

Why didn’t he just pay them to move over a building or two? I know someone who works at the MTA’s administration, and they are constantly paying millions to churches that need to be relocated. They’ll even dismantle the church and rebuild it in a new location.

Unfortunately, the Muppet movie’s writers have a child’s view of the world. They seem to think anyone trying to supply the rest of us with oil must be smoking the greed pipe and cares nothing for human life.

Despite the smug leftist grins of denial, this agenda is all over children’s movies. In 2009’s Astro Boy, the hero’s headquarters has portraits of Lenin and Trotsky on the wall—Hitler was conspicuously absent. Both Happy Feet films hammer the viewer over the head with the merits of diversity and the perils of climate change. I don’t know how many times I’ve had to sit down with my kids after a film and say, “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to make money.” After they saw Curious George, I had to explain that it’s OK to want to close down a museum if nobody goes there, ever. In the film, the heroes try to trick people into coming to the dying museum by projecting holograms of fake artifacts. When they finally get a lead on something that would revitalize the museum, the owner gets all Tex Richman on their ass and tries to sabotage their success. Why he doesn’t want his own museum to prosper is beyond me. The left is convinced the only way people get rich is to steal from someone else. If that doesn’t work, wreck someone else’s plan.