Monday Night Tease’s Muppet Burlesque made me realize just exactly how perverse my childhood really was.
Seriously (seriously!), the kid-centric content of the ’70s was the product of a lot of young idealistic artists who, let’s be honest, smoked a lot of dope. The whole Jim Henson oeuvre, Free To Be You & Me, The Electric Company, H.R. Puffinstuff (!)… It made for a heady brew for a pre-teen, and I drank deeply.
(To this day, I’m pretty sure Mr. Greenjeans was a pot farmer and Captain Kangaroo a dope dealer. OPEN YOUR EYES people, the signs are all there…!)
Fast forward to the late ’80s and the Reagan-era deregulation of TV that gutted the educational requirements for TV licenses, paving the way for kids show that were little more than 30-minute toy ads. Capitalism licked its chops over a new market of captive kids parked in front of Nickelodeon all day, and sucked much of openness and anarchy out of children’s television. Throw in a few million happy meals and bowls of sugary breakfast cereal (the empty calorie “part of this nutritious breakfast”) and it leads straight to today’s obesity epidemic.
Seriously, Gen Y (and beyond), you may mock us but you have no idea what you missed out on. Enjoy your iPods and overdeveloped sense of entitlement.
But back to the point: Monday Night Tease rocked, and Muppet Burlesque 2011 is already marked on my imaginary calendar. See you there.
