Oscar the Grouch

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The Week’s Most Souring, Glowering, and April-Showering Headlines

TODAY’S SESAME STREET IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE NUMBER 1488
Back in the 1970s, Sesame Street introduced Mr. Snuffleupagus, an absurd elephantine/anteater-esque beast that only Big Bird could see. Oh, the mockery that Big Bird used to endure when he would swear that Snuffleupagus exists, and the other characters would berate him: “There’s no such thing, you silly bird!”

Well, last week Sesame Street introduced a new character that only Elmo can see: Elijah, a well-spoken, responsible black father who stays actively involved in his son’s life and rationally discusses matters of race with nonblacks without resorting to ad hominem diatribes.

Big Bird had a better chance of being believed.

Welcome Elijah and Wes, the new black Muppets. As described by NBC News:

Sesame Street has two new Muppets, a Black father and son, in an effort to help children understand racial literacy. In the promo, Elmo asks why Wes’s skin is brown. His dad Elijah explains how “the color of our skin is an important part of who we are.”

“They see color: Two new Black ‘Sesame Street’ characters explain racial difference to children,” exclaimed CNN in a celebratory headline lauding the push in children’s entertainment to force kids to “see color” (because evaluating people based on anything other than race is racist).

According to the official Sesame Street “racial justice” webpage (yes, that’s a real thing), “All kids need a strong individual and group identity, but racism hurts the healthy development of both.” Wait…“all kids” need a strong “group identity”? Doesn’t “all” include white? Damn…Sesame Street’s gone white nationalist! It’s a literal call to aktion to join the Church of the Creator! (Jokes aside, how long before that sentence gets rejiggered?) The website repeats the line from the promo: “The color of our skin is an important part of who we are.”

Okay, how the hell did Andrew Anglin troll his way into the Sesame Street writers’ room?

In the promotional video, Elijah informs Elmo, “Things on the outside, like our skin color, our hair texture, our noses, our mouths and eyes, make us who we are. Many people call this race!”

Did you ever think that the most Hitlery thing said on television since The World at War broadcast speeches by literal Hitler would be said on publicly funded Sesame Street? “Our race makes us who we are”…the line between woke and based blurs daily.

At one point, Elmo picks up a dead leaf from the ground and says, “This leaf is brown like Wes’ skin.” He then compares the father/son duo’s brown skin to his own red fur.

Yep, that’s exactly what black people love hearing: “Your skin, which looks like this dried-up dead leaf, also resembles animal fur.” Again, jokes aside, how long before this promo gets banned as genocidal racism?

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of the introductory “Elijah and Wes” video is the fact that Elmo and the other Muppets appear to have no idea what black people are. They ask the father and son, “What are you? Why are you brown?” as if this is the first time they’ve ever seen a person of color. Over the decades, there have been dozens of black characters on the show (there’ve been black Muppets as well). Gordon Robinson, owner of the iconic 123 Sesame Street brownstone, was the first character introduced during the show’s premiere in 1969. The character was only retired four years ago. That means that for almost fifty years, the Muppets were literally staring at the guy going, “What the hell’s your deal, you leaf-skinned freak?”

It took Elmo, in 2021, to finally ask, “Okay, what are these brown-colored creatures anyway?”

By the way, it should be noted that the only reason Elmo is voiced by a white person is because the 60-year-old black puppeteer who performed as Elmo from 1984 through 2012 resigned following allegations of having inserted his skilled hands into “puppets” that were actually flesh-and-blood underage boys. According to court documents, puppeteer Kevin Clash favored his teenage lovers with acts of “groping, masturbation, intense kissing, and dry-humping.”

Now that Elmo’s finally figured out what a black person is, perhaps he can help educate the other characters about the meaning of “pedophile.”

NO WHITEMAN, NO CRY
“Hemal Jhaveri” sounds like a terribly serious blood disorder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Perkins, but you have hemal-jhaveri. We can keep you comfortable for a few weeks, but best to get your affairs in order.” In fact, however, Hemal Jhaveri is something far worse than a disease. She’s a scare-quotes “journalist” whose entire career has been based upon either celebrating or condemning people because of the color of their skin. And when she couldn’t find work at Sesame Street, she was hired by USA Today as the paper’s “race and inclusion editor.”

In case there’s any confusion regarding what exactly a “race and inclusion editor” is, it’s a job typically given to women named LaQueeshifer, Guadalupe, Ming-wan, or Hemal by news admins trying to connect with woke millennials, and the job description normally reads something like “Make every story about how white people suck.”

And that’s exactly what Hemoglobin Javelin did after the mass shooting in Boulder a week ago. Without knowing anything about the murderer’s identity, she tweeted, “It’s always an angry white man. Always.”

Sadly for Hemostat, the killer turned out to be an immigrant Syrian terrorist named Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa (which is the Arabic version of John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt). Across Twitter, people criticized and ridiculed Hormel Jiveturkey for her blatant and factually incorrect racial scapegoating. And in a surprising development, USA Today actually listened. The paper unceremoniously canned its “race and inclusion editor,” much to the surprise of those in the media who hold similar posts.

CNN’s Issac Bailey, a black man who serves as the network’s “race relations creator and facilitator” (one suspects that somewhere there’s a computer that randomly generates these titles), came to Jhericurl’s defense, penning an op-ed for a network that, forty years ago, covered actual news, hard as that is to believe now:

Journalist Hemal Jhaveri recently sent an ill-advised, ill-considered tweet during a particularly emotional moment. Jhaveri’s tweet was tin-eared. It overly generalized a complex and horrific phenomenon—mass shootings—and unfairly targeted a group in a heated moment. There’s no excuse for it. Most of us who frequent Twitter have found ourselves caught up in an emotional knee jerk reaction, only to realize later we’ve taken things a bit too far. I know I have.

Look, “taking things a bit too far” is what “race inclusion diversity relations equity facilitators” are supposed to do. In fact, “understanding and expressing nuance” is the one thing that automatically disqualifies someone from holding such positions. And indeed, Bailey makes it clear that even though Hematosis was wrong, she wasn’t fired because she was wrong. She was fired because the higher-ups at USA Today are microaggressive racists who “canceled” a “journalist” because her errors made them “uncomfortable”:

We are expected to ignore or accept everyday microaggressions and watch White colleagues express themselves in ways we don’t always feel free to. Then, when we speak up, we are called to account for making them uncomfortable.

For her part, Hemorrhage Jedi wrote a bitter piece for Medium in which she explained that even though her tweet was “a dashed off over-generalization” and “a careless error of judgement, sent at a heated time, that doesn’t represent my commitment to racial equality,” she only wrote it because when video surfaced of the Boulder shooter being taken into custody, she studied his facial features and concluded that he was white.

And indeed, what else should a “race realism equitacious inclusivitous facilitationist editor” do if not scan the skin tone, hair, nose, and eyes of suspected killers for proper racial classification?

That USA Today would hire someone like this, for a BS job like that, and not expect her to do a Julius Streicher phrenological examination of newsworthy citizens, is ridiculous. She was merely doing the job she was hired to do: make everything about race.

“Race makes us who we are.” That’s the mantra, from Madison Avenue to K Street to Sesame Street. Regardless of how one feels about “cancel culture,” to fire someone for being racially incendiary when they were hired to be racially incendiary is as insane as the decision to hire them in the first place.

THIRD-WAVE FECULISM
Remember Elizabeth Holmes? She was the plucky 19-year-old woman of the year who built, from the ground up, a sooper-spectacular lifesaving “hi-tech health company” called Theranos. Holmes—being a superwoman and all—had developed a technology that revolutionized blood-drawing and blood-testing. By 2010 she’d raised nearly a billion bucks for her grrrrrrl-powered company, and by 2013 Theranos, with a $10 billion valuation, appeared unstoppable.

Yet stopped it was, primarily (and also solely) due to the fact that Holmes was a con artist who rode her gender, good looks, and fake-deep voice (think tranny Lauren Bacall) to fame while touting a company that couldn’t even remotely deliver on what it promised investors.

“Marie Curie,” meet grand jury. At present, Holmes is awaiting trial on federal fraud charges.

Surely, following the Holmes fiasco, gullible reporters and starry-eyed investors learned their lesson when it comes to pretty young things touting revolutionary biological testing start-ups. But you know the old saying—“Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, this is CNN.” Jessica “Sunshine” Richman intrinsically understood that the best way to copy a social justice con is to do it bigger, better, and more ridiculously, because the morons burned by the last one will grasp at anything to prove that the previous con was an anomaly and not the rule.

So several years ago Richman began touting her own revolutionary new high-tech health company that pledged to forever change how mankind looks at…poo.

Yes, whereas Theranos promised new state-of-the-art blood-testing technologies, Richman’s company touted new methods for testing doo-doo. Richman told investors that for just a billion dollars or so, she’d deliver a “direct-to-consumer fecal matter test” that would allow every American to round out each bathroom visit with an immediate “gut bacteria” health update, with a device no more invasive than a rectal thermometer.

Theranos, meet Theranus.

Journalists couldn’t get enough of Richman. She was featured on CNN’s list of the top “30 Under 30” young female entrepreneurs (she was “number 2”). Business Insider included her on its own “30 Under 30” list as well. And Gwyneth Paltrow took time out from marketing her flatulence as an air freshener to tout Richman’s “Fitbit for the gut” on her personal website. Meanwhile, idiots with money to burn threw millions of dollars at Richman as if she were a poop-peddling pole dancer.

For their part, feminist activists praised Richman’s stunning and brave “sisters are doo-ing it for themselves” attitude.

Finally, the specter of Elizabeth Holmes and her fake voice and fake company would be exorcised.

Or not.

Turns out Richman’s business model was far less firm, and far more odorous, than the stool upon which it was built. Her “gut Fitbit” was a hoax. Worse still, she wasn’t even “under 30.” She was, in fact, in her mid-40s.

But at least her voice was real.

Last week, Richman and her husband and partner were indicted on multiple counts of felony fraud. Prosecutors claim that the couple netted over $99 million with their “three turd Monte” scheme.

And while Richman’s fate is likely sealed, somewhere in this great nation a new ambitious young female swindler is exploring the next bodily fluid, secretion, or waste matter to exploit for profit.

Considering that Richman made almost a hundred million dollars on a nonexistent dookie monitor, she’ll be a very hard act to follow.

A “MISS” IS AS GOOD AS A VILE
There’s a scene in the classic Depression-era period piece Emperor of the North in which Lee Marvin’s rail-riding hobo “A-No.1” steals a turkey. Pursued by a beat cop, the hobo leads the officer right into a nearby hobo encampment. The cop finds himself surrounded by a hundred angry transients armed with knives and lead pipes.

Enjoying the power shift, A-No.1, still holding the bird, asks the policeman why he was in pursuit. The cop replies, “Because you stole that turkey.”

“That ain’t a turkey,” the hobo sternly retorts. “It’s a dog.”

Sensing the hostility of the crowd surrounding him (hobos hated cops), the officer meekly replies, “Okay, okay, it’s a dog.”

Then the turkey makes gobbling noises. A-No.1 looks at the bird, and shoots the policeman a glare of contempt. “Look what you’ve done,” the hobo says with a scowl. “Now he thinks he’s a turkey. You better remind him how to bark.”

And with that the hobos force the cop to bark like a dog, louder and louder, to “affirm” the turkey’s fake identity. Once they’ve tormented him enough, they break out laughing and offer the poor bastard a drink.

That film was made in 1973. And it’s unlikely that anyone involved ever imagined that less that fifty years later, tormenting people until they say “a turkey is a dog” would become a national pastime for the left.

Of course, it’s not actually about turkeys and dogs. It’s about forcing people to swear that a man is a woman. Somehow, what started out as “I want to be free to be the me I want to be” has ended up as “I don’t want you to be free to see the me I am.”

Nicholas Meriwether is a professor of philosophy, religion, and ethics at Shawnee State University in Ohio. Meriwether, a devout Christian, has taught at the public university for 25 years with no problems.

Enter a problem: a tranny known in court records only as “Jane Doe.” Jane Doe is a dude in lipstick who decided several years ago that he’s a woman. By all accounts, Doe looks about as feminine as Lee Marvin. But Doe, who apparently took Meriwether’s class on purpose to mess with a person of faith, insisted that the professor call him “ma’am.” When Meriwether would not comply, Doe angrily confronted him after class and demanded to be called a woman. But unlike the cop in Emperor of the North, Meriwether refused, citing the fact that Doe is not a woman. Meriwether explained that common sense, his duty as a teacher, and his faith prohibit him from claiming something to be true that he knows isn’t true.

As if that’s a defense in 2021!

The transturkeydog complained to university officials, who immediately launched an investigation into the professor’s actions. In various meetings held during the course of the “investigation,” Meriwether was attacked by the dean, the department chair, and the provost for his Christian beliefs and his “intolerance” and “hate” for not calling a sir a ma’am. The entire university ganged up on one man just like those Emperor of the North hobos. You must call that turkey a dog! When Meriwether proposed a compromise, that he eliminate pronouns from his classroom vocabulary and simply address his students by last name, the university rejected the offer.

Because the entire episode wasn’t about “tranny rights.” It was about compelling a man to speak against truth, and against his faith. He must be forced to call a man a woman.

Thankfully, last week the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Meriwether’s favor. The panel of judges (two Trump appointees and one W. Bush appointee) excoriated the school for attempting to “compel ideological conformity.” The judges found that university officials violated Meriwether’s free speech rights and his free exercise rights by attempting to force him to reject his faith and the evidence of his eyes.

Five years ago, certain canny pundits foresaw exactly this type of court case. And the Sixth Circuit’s decision is just the beginning. These matters will eventually get to the Supreme Court, where the nation will see if Trump, for all his faults, at the very least helped craft a SCOTUS willing to stand up for every American’s right to call a turkey a turkey when a mob demands otherwise.

(KEEPING HELL) HOT FOR TEACHER
America’s unionized public school teachers…the true heroes of Covid. What a brave and hearty bunch of public servants. Whether it’s keeping schools closed for political reasons, or mocking and insulting parents who want their children to receive in-person education, or taking beach vacations while lecturing the rest of us that it’s unsafe to go outside, or turning a blind eye to the horrific rise in depression and suicide among children deprived of the social interactions in-person schooling provides, public school teachers are the best!

These are folks who spend their guaranteed paychecks at grocery stores—not a thought given to the cashiers, baggers, and stock clerks who’ve been coming to work every day since the pandemic began and yet are alive and healthy—and then return home to write theatrically histrionic treatises about how they’re drawing up their will because should they be forced back into the classroom, death will be the certain outcome.

In January, when asked why they were preventing a return to in-person schooling, Chicago Teachers Union officials responded by releasing a video of interpretive dance that is so bat-spit crazy, half the people who saw it assumed it was parody. But it was dead serious. And while in a sane America this “our fluid balletic movements illustrate why we’re ignoring the science on Covid” video would have been the No. 1 topic of mockery among light-night talk-show hosts, in actual America our self-appointed “comedians” greeted it with awed reverence, in part because comedians don’t actually do comedy anymore, and in part because most of the people who pass as comedians came up through public schools, taught by teachers who ensured that they’d have no comprehension of humor beyond “Republican bad!”

Having successfully caused untold numbers of kids to commit suicide with their boarded-up schools, America’s heroic teachers are now moving on to the next battlefield: “critical race theory.” Which is a nondescript term for an ideology that states that “everything bad that ever happened anywhere is due to white people. Nonwhites are innocent little lambs incapable of malice or wrongdoing. Whiteness must be eliminated for the world to ever know true peace.”

While many schools across the country have been slowly adopting critical race theory in classrooms for years, villainous right-wingers have recently become more vocal in bringing the matter to the attention of parents…some of whom are white! And those parents have started objecting to their children being taught that they’re evil because of their race (well, that just proves how racist they are!).

To combat this scourge of wicked Nazis objecting to their children being told that their skin color makes them sinful, anti-racist public school teachers (who understand that the only true anti-racist is one who embraces the blanket vilification of a race) in Virginia launched a Facebook group to target, dox, and harass local parents who oppose critical race theory in the classroom. The group, made up of teachers, school board members, and ideologically allied parents, collected personal information on dissident parents, with the intent of either getting them fired or making them feel afraid of violent retaliation.

Himmler would surely be fascinated by this new incarnation of the SS: a merciless skull-cracking gang of thugs acting in the name of racial tolerance.

Several of the targeted parents went to the police. The Loudon County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the Gestapedagogues, and the district superintendent has denounced the group’s activities.

Pity the teachers…all they want to do is stay home while getting paid while keeping kids uneducated and suicidal and aware that their skin color is what makes them sacred or satanic.

Such benevolent goals. That filthy commoners dare oppose these compassionate heroes only serves to prove how needed they are.