It's not explained how the dreaded AIDS virus jumped across species lines, and even less clear whether the puppet got the disease from intravenous drug use, from unprotected sexual intercourse with an infected male muppet, or is merely a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS from a therapeutic injection of stuffing, or maybe purified muppet coagulation factor (MCF), from an infected muppet stuffing donor. Since the puppet reportedly will be a female, it would seem to rule out homosexual activity as a cause.
Maybe she will be heroin addict who, because of a tragic and deprived upbringing, will spend her days wrapping a crumbling piece of yellow Latex tubing around her spindly little arm and using a match to melt a syrupy mixture of alkaloids and heterocyclic endorphin receptor agonists in a rusty steel spoon, while sitting in a barren, unfurnished room with peeling wallpaper, obscene graffiti on the walls, and a window that looks out every morning over a foggy, defeated bombscape strewn with burnt-out cars, vacant lots overgrown with ragged weeds, and decrepit, roach-filled hotels with old men carrying bottles of whisky wrapped in paper bags standing in front.
Or maybe not. "She will have high self-esteem," chirped Joel Schneider, vice president and senior adviser to the Sesame Street Workshop. "We want to show that here is an HIV-positive member of our community who you can touch and interact with." But the never-ending series of scandals involving these ulotrichous homunculi reveals an underlying countercurrent of violence, disease, and nihilistic despair.
You may remember the international scandal that erupted last September when it was revealed that Bert, the talented muppet of the beloved Sesame Street singing duo Bert and Ernie, was suspected of being a member of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda after Pakistani demonstrators were seen carrying posters with images of Bert together with the terrorist Usama bin Laden.
This, of course, is the same pair of muppets that threatened to sue Peter Spears, the director of Ernest and Bertram, a documentary spoof of two male puppets who become heated lovers. According to ABC news, Spears created an 8-minute movie back in 1993 that ends with a distraught Ernie shooting himself in the head. The Children's Television Workshop, defending the inanimate and irascible puppet, was forced to issue this 1993 press release:
"Bert and Ernie, who've been on Sesame Street for 25 years, do not portray a gay couple, and there are no plans for them to do so in the future."
But the fabulous fantoccini has been implicated in even more tenebrous machinations. Bert's alleged entanglements with the KKK, according to Brad Fitzgerald, creator of the satirical "Bert Is Evil" website, who reported that Bert was a founding member of the hated organization, suggest that Bert might be part of a wider conspiracy. "There's no doubt Bert had a role in JFK's assassination," Fitzgerald said. "But I don't think Bert did it because he's gay. He had deeper, darker motivations and the folks at Sesame Street can't keep this conspiracy covered up forever."
Then there was the Teletubbies purse-carrying character, a purple ... thing ... named Tinky-Winky who dances just a bit too cheerfully over the hillside while carrying a purse, and came under allegations of being a homosexual, or transvestite, or something. Although the allegations that Tinky-Winky was really an interior decorator were reported by CNN back in 1997, and the Village Voice in 1998 praised the twinkle-toed Teletubbies series for their epicene Tinky Winky character, it didn't elicit much attention from the news media until Jerry Falwell criticized him, er, her, in an article in The Liberty Journal.
The news media, of course, used this as an excuse for an orgy, so to speak, of Falwell-bashing. But Jonah Goldberg of the National Review pointed out that, while the teletubbies may not be queer, the are certainly weird. "It wasn't Falwell who first picked up on this instance of crypto-homoerotic tropism in fin-de-siècle adolescent programming", says Goldberg in his column, lifting a lugubrious lucubration from an old college film textbook. "The second biggest audience [after moms playing with their kids] is pot-heads taking Rastafarian communion while knee deep in 7-11 microwavable burrito wrappers. It's no surprise that people who like to spark up watch this stuff since you'd have to be high as a moon bat to write it."
But the perverted perambulations of purple puppets pale in contrast to the libidinous locomotions of the lavender lachrymator Barney, the rufescent Rabelaisian reptile whose cacophonous coloraturas have come to represent the sine qua non of an a priori irrationalist Weltanschauung (I have some old textbooks too.). So far, Barney has not been implicated in any major scandals, although his role, if any, in the Enron and WorldCom debacles has not been explained. Still, any dinosaur as annoying as Barney must be guilty of something. The only scandal definitely attributed to the voluble violet Visigoth has been a lame attempt by two graduate students at the University of South Florida in Tampa to mock Christian fundamentalists by pretending to be offended by Barney's "message of Satanism, occultism and witchcraft".
Puppets are a reflection of us. But puppets also have their own unique problems. They are trapped in an endless childhood, an unending cycle of samsara from which there is no escape other than drugs, prostitution, disease, and death. The tragedy of their endless lifetimes of torment and suffering finds its only outlet in homosexuality, neuroses, and even -- if not treated in time -- crime, terrorism, and the downward spiral of drug abuse. The only thing preventing puppets from committing crimes against humanity, genocide, or even a second Holocaust is their lack of ability to formulate ideas, hold opinions, and to move or act independently. Despite these limitations, or indeed perhaps because of them, puppets have their own angst, their own inner demons. Each puppet has an inner infant struggling to get out. They are awash with unresolved subconscious psychic tectonic forces but are powerless to express them. How many puppets, lacking the financial Wall Street acumen of a Barney or the golden baritone virtuosity of an Ernie, have slipped into alcoholism, crime, and drug use?
Well okay, none. But good puppets gone bad, like Bert or Mr. (or is it Ms.) Winky, need support and encouragement if they are to take that first step along the long road to recovery. We must help them succeed. Perhaps someone could pull a few strings.