Krazy Bill Kristol hates Sesame Street, liberal education, and the number 44

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Mitt Romney may have "won" last week's debate, but the larger takeaway is that he's a liar who wants to kill Big Bird. And in response his supporters are reiterating the lies and taking Romney's anti-Sesame Street line (or, rather, anti-funding for public television, including Sesame Street) beyond even what he intended, arguing that Sesame Street is fundamentally evil, the PBS equivalent to sending your children to an al Qaeda training camp in South Waziristan.

It isn't about the budget anymore. Funding for public television accounts for just 0.012 of the federal budget. It's about right-wing political correctness and paranoia. And you can find it spewing from the neocon delusions of Krazy Bill Kristol:

[T]here's something deeply revealing about Obama's blithe willingness to portray Wall Street as an enemy. Wall Street is key to American prosperity -- even to American greatness. Lots of important and impressive Americans have had careers on Wall Street. What Wall Street does is important. Wall Street matters.

I hate to tell the liberals this, but Sesame Street doesn't. It would be nice if life were "a magic carpet ride/Every door will open wide." It would be nice if happiness could be achieved by government telling us, "how to get/How to get to Sesame Street." It would be nice (maybe) if the world of Sesame Street were real.

But it's not. It's fictional. It's childish. It's as fictional and childish as the make-believe world of Obama's liberalism -- a liberalism that scorns Wall Street, and disdains Main Street... but embraces Sesame Street.

This is entirely ridiculous, of course. Obama doesn't think Wall Street is any sort of enemy. And he obviously knows that Wall Street matters. Has Kristol ever taken a look at the president's economic team? Does he remember Obama's tepid treatment of the real perpetrators of the Great Recession? Does he remember Obama's cautious approach to regulation? What the president objects to isn't Wall Street but the sort of destructive avarice that led to Wall Street's all-out assult on "Main Street." What he objects to, that is, is Wall Street run amok.

And of course he doesn't disdain Main Street. What does that even mean? The president's record has focused on salvaging what was left of Main Street from the ravages of Wall Street and uncontrolled corporate greed. The president has supported business, kept taxes historically low, and focused on rebuilding the economy out of the rubble that Republican policy had created.

As for Sesame Street... does it matter? Of course it does. It's an educational institution that without proselytizing teaches children the values that any modern liberal society should value. It's not about government telling you this or that, it's about learning in a fun, entertaining setting. You can fairly criticize its methods, just as you can fairly criticize the use of television as an educational tool, but if you really object to its values you're basically a monster.

Of course it's make-believe! It's a television show populated mostly by muppets! And of course it's idealistic. It presents a comforting world for children away from the ugliness and violence of so much of modern life. (But it's also very much rooted in the real world, and if you don't get that, you've either never seen the show or are an ignorant right-wing bigot. Or both.)

But to say that it therefore doesn't matter is just plain stupid.

And if Bill Kristol, an educated and supposedly smart guy, insists on criticizing "Obama's liberalism," and therefore to such things as marriage equality, access to affordable health care, and dignified care for seniors, what he's really saying is that he objects to the values of toleration, inclusion, opportunity, and hope, which is what you find on Sesame Street and in the hearts and minds of Americans who want a bit more from life than the retrograde dystopia of the conservative -- and neoconservative -- imagination.