I hope she’s colorblind as well, or she’s gonna be pissed that her parents and the corporation for public broadcasting made her look like a blotter test on mushrooms….
Sesame Street has a new muppet who is hungry for more than just cookies.
The iconic kids show is set to unveil a new impoverished puppet named Lily, whose family faces an ongoing struggle with hunger issues…“Food insecurity is a growing and difficult issue for adults to discuss, much less children,” said the Paisleys in a statement. “We are honored that Sesame Street, with its long history of tackling difficult issues with sensitivity, caring and warmth asked us to be a part of this important project.”
And, lest you not take this seriously….
The special will share the stories of real-life families to raise awareness of hunger issues in the United States, as well as strategies that have helped these families find food. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that 17 million American children — nearly 1 in 4 — have limited or uncertain access to affordable and nutritious food. Walmart is sponsoring the show as part of a $1.5 million grant toward the initiative and holding screenings in select communities.
You know, I’d like to be nice, and say that I applaud Sesame Street for this and blah, blah, blah blah. But, I won’t, because I would be being dishonest.
Until you’ve seen kids in the shitholes I have been to, you’ll have a hard time convincing me to take “food insecurity” in the US too seriously. There are simply too many avenues out there for parents who don’t have money. And all of them should be utilized. But all too often I see asshole parents who are buying their Gov’t cheese and a pack of cigarettes and a 6-pack of beer. I’m not going to be made to feel bad because other parents make shitty personal choices. Frankly, it just annoys the hell out of me.
And I love that DoA is the one that does this story. Not like they have any vested interest in cooking the books on those stats do they? Look, I am all for well-fed children, but take a look at the damn DoA budget and tell me there isn’t enough funds already in there to take care of kids.
You want a safety net for these kids? How about churches, which offer this all the time. My church gives HUGE amounts of money to trying to get kids these lunches. I pay my taxes which go to this etc. Do I really need a TV show paid for with my tax money, augmented by a huge corporation that will make money on food sales, working together to make me feel bad for kids I don’t have?
Somehow this whole thing pisses me off almost as much as the idiots who will be marching single-file through Indy this weekend. Maybe I will go down there and hand out apples and carrot sticks to make sure everyone is fully nourished.
UPDATE: The Secretary of Agriculture emailed me a nasty note about my post, and said he spent 15 million looking at what will happen to this poor Muppet inside the year, and this is what he came up with:
That’s a lot of animosity directed at one Muppet. I’m guessing TSO stands for Taking Sandwiches (from) Oscar.
Muppets are starving and you don’t care? You have no soul sir. You have no soul.
“Maybe I will go down there and hand out apples and carrot sticks to make sure everyone is fully nourished.”
Screw that! Hand out nuthin’. Ass, gas, or grass; no one rides for free. You want a carrot? $1. You want an apple? $2.50.
That’s in response to those that are travelling to Indy, NOT to those children that don’t have enough to eat, but somehow, their parents have enough to buy a pack of smokes.
Kids here are all starving but the same gubmiint agencies piss and moan about obesity rates among “the poor”? Oh, okay. And yeah, TSO…none of these fuckers has a clue what poor REALLY is.
We’ve dumbed it down so far that these guys keep moving the goalposts. Kids are no longer “starving”, instead they “have limited or uncertain access to affordable and nutritious food.”
Seriously, what does that even mean? I also have uncertain access to nutritious food. I mean, I could walk across the street, but the way folks drive nowadays, that is perilous.
If things are that bad for starving children, maybe Sesame Street they should donate all of the $30 million in annual sales from Tickle Me Elmo and Tickle Me Ernie?
Or sign over the millions and millions of dollars in profits from Sesame Street licensing (video games, DVDs, the new Muppet Movie starring Sesame Street character Kermit the Frog, etc.)
Seriously, Sesame Street is nothing more than a 30-minute commercial for their products.
Geez… How am I to top this?
Working…
Oh yeah… Yer a Lawyer!!!
I’ve puzzled on this for years, and I keep coming to the same conclusion: A child in this country going hungry is a case of child abuse. Poverty as an excuse doesn’t cut it when there are free meals at school (my district serves breakfast and lunch – free to those who need it), food stamps, food banks, churches… The only unmitigated cause of child hunger I can think of is parental neglect. That’s a problem can’t be fixed with money – that warrants removal of the child from the home.
ouch?
If your child is not getting enough food (and I’m not talking 8 serving of organic vegetables a day, I’m talking meeting your physiological needs) you’re fucking up as a parent. It’s YOUR fault. It is literally IMPOSSIBLE to starve or be chronically malnourished in the United States. If you have kids you can’t afford to feed you WILL receive food stamps. There are soup kitchens in every major city in the country which WILL provide services to families. You can even show up to a hospital and if you’re not malnourished enough to be considered in a state of medical need you WILL be directed to somewhere you can get food.
These “food insecurity” statistics are phony numbers derived from ridiculous metrics designed to elicit a particular political reaction in people. And, echoing Jonn, if you’ve never left the United States you don’t understand hunger. Real hunger is not “my parents suck at being parents and only feed me chips and TV dinners so I don’t get enough iron and vitamin C.” Real hunger is bony children with distended stomach 30lbs underweight picking through the burning trash dumps outside Djibouti City or Nairobi in their bare feet looking for scraps of food or things they can sell in order to eat that week.
@#7 You hit the nail square on the head. There is also a direct link between drug use (talking street drugs here) by parents, and child hunger.
It also has to be remembered that, while it is optimum that children suffering neglect be taken out of the abusive situation, there are a lot more children in need than there are foster homes and group homes to care for them.
I agree with many of the above points.
If any child goes hungry it is the fault of the “parents.”
We have food banks, churches, etc., that give free food.
Now I’m not being insensitive and agree that there are many families and kids that are struggling financially.
But to give this impression that American society does not care for its poor and hungry is false.
And we read a lot about these city and government officials wasting tax payer dollars to enrich themselves, that is the real obscenity. I have no qualms about my tax dollars helping those who truly need it (to a point of course).
It seems a little weird that this doll is so incredibly colorful. Is it pink to suggest Gays are bad parents? or is that a racial statement meant to say that “colored” people’s children are starving?
lol ok enough PCpeak. #7 you have an excellent point. of course I would also throw out that even if you’re homeless, and bat shit crazy they’ll still feed you. I once saw a (very obese) woman pull up in an Escalade and try to pay for gas with Food stamps (which you can do in CA). Someone, quick, what’s wrong with this picture?
TSO: instead they “have limited or uncertain access to affordable and nutritious food.”
Trust a fucking bureaucrat to come up with that shit.
Memo to “poor” people: Look fuckers, for the price of two bags of chips, I can buy fresh vegetables and meat and make a fucking beef stew for a family of five that not only tastes good, but is good for you, and I’ll have leftovers to take to work the next day.
And miracle of miracles–it’s all in the SAME FUCKING STORE!!!!
Don’t even get me started on what you can buy with what you fuckers spend on a case of beer and a carton of smokes.
“UPDATE: The Secretary of Agriculture emailed me a nasty note about my post, and said he spent 15 million looking at what will happen to this poor Muppet inside the year, and this is what he came up with:”
The Sec of A spent 15 million on a fuckin’ STUDY??? If you already know what the “problem” is (and I use the term cautiously), why didn’t the douche hand out the money directly to the poor, starving (I mean, “food insecure”) children??
Gubbment inefficiency in action.
“TSO: instead they “have limited or uncertain access to affordable and nutritious food.””
What he meant by that is this: Michelle Obama has stated that she wants to spend $400 million to get supermarkets into the “food deserts” where there are no markets, only fast food emporiums, so that the poor downtrodden woman doesn’t have to take 6 buses to get to a supermarket to purchase healthy food to feed her children.
That is a farce. I lived in the ‘hood with a supermarket 6 blocks away and you saw the kids running around with fast food bags because the 99 cent menu left more time and money to go clubbing with their homegirls. It is not now, nor has it ever been about feeding the kids nutritious foods. It’s convenience over cost (because fast food is no longer that cheap). Momma doesn’t have to take time out of her busy day to cook for her kids and the kids don’t really care as long as they get something to eat.
The only limited access to nutritious food is the parent, not society.
I just visited the USDA’s Food and Nutrition site to learn what can be purchased with food stamps. Since Halloween is approaching, I thought I’d use that pagan event to guide our food stamp purchases. Grab a cart.
1.Pumpkins, of course;
2.Soda of any type and energy drinks;
3.Candy corn and any other type of candy;
4.Cookies in the shapes of ghouls and any other type of cookies;
5.A big decorated cake, so long as the decorations do not exceed 50% of the cost (‘Happy Halloween!’);
6.Apples for dunking;
7.Donuts for the string (ever play the blindfold bite-the-donut game?);
8.Steak;
9.Lobster;
10.King crab;
11.Ice cream; and
12. For prizes, how about gift baskets filled with non-food and food items (so long as the non-food items do not exceed 50% of the cost.
The thing that frustrates me the most is the amount of effort diverted from looking for and keeping a job. Getting on and staying in these government programs like food stamps, SSI, TANF is actually very time-consuming. I’ve seen first hand (not me) that it takes a lot of “work” to keep up with the paperwork and status reporting and mandatory in person reviews with a case worker. Seems to me that is evidence of an ability to hold a job. I have the same thought about beggars cadging for change on street corners. That’s hard work – but completely counterproductive at a community/society level. At some level, some (by no means all) of these folks have to be making a choice that “free” money is a better deal than earning it. I couldn’t do it.
It is like an addictive drug. Once you’ve been on it for a while, it is hard to give it up. But unlike drug addiction, total dependency on government for housing, clothing, food, and medical care no longer carries the stigma that it once did. We now have generations of folks who have accepted government as their caregiver, the Great Provider.
My mother received welfare when I was a kid. There were four of us, total. They told her how much money she could make, how much in assets she could have, etc…It was supposed to be a “helpful” program and all it did was drag people down. After the neighbors (who also got welfare) reported that my mother was committing fraud because she had her father’s car to get to work, she told them all to go fuck themselves and took on 2 more jobs.
We never starved and I daresay that in the 70’s, 80’s that 300 a month for rent was a lot. We ate a lot of pasta, and a lot of chuck. But we never went without food.
And I can cook a meal for 7 people with all the food groups for less than a dollar per person and we’re not fat!
If kids are going hungry, I agree that it is the parent fault. A freaking bag of 8 oz. chips is 4.29. I can feed my kids at McDonald’s for that amount of money. A pack of smokes is more! Yep. Horseshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBlXD27ZJr8&feature=related
@20, yup, now those kids are starving. And I would argue (contra Joe et al) that those people are starving BECAUSE of the Gov’t and tax system etc that they live under. If we had brought democracy and capitalism to those countries, I suspect that there would be means to ensure that they weren’t starving to death.
What a great learning tool for teaching everyone that they are a victim!
Wonder how many of the poor, starving children will learn their victimization skills from this critter on a big screen TV?
One wonders what ever happened to teaching children how to deal with counting, and actually dealing with death (there was actually a GREAT episode that dealt with cancer)