If you unplug on the weekends and don’t pay attention to the insanity that is political social media, you may have woken up this morning shocked to discover that Sesame Street has entered the vaccine debate. I wish this were a topic I hadn’t come across, but I did. Now we need to talk about it.
Mike Miller, my colleague pointed out that this really has taken the discussion to dizzying new heights.
CNN teamed up this morning with Sesame Street for a COVID vaccine “town hall” to convince 5-to-11-year-olds and their parents to get the young children vaccinated.
Big Bird is shown as a 6 year-old boy and is encouraged to have his vaccines. He does so at the end. This is a taste of: pic.twitter.com/hlSY04w6om
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) November 6, 2021
The first issue that needs to be dealt with is that Big Bird cannot possibly be depicted as 6 years of age. Big Bird debuted on Sesame Street in 1969, making him approximately 52 years old – still 13 years out of the highest-risk category for COVID-19. However, this is quite a life expectancy for a bird. Is bird life like that of dogs?
…Apparently, there is a calculator for this. This calculator calculates 52 bird years as 472 human years. That’s a little over half of Adam’s lifespan in the Bible. Big Bird is a witness to some amazing things. What is the secret to his longevity? Is he a runner? Get his vitamins Receive his bird flu vaccine?
Wait, that last one may be a “Yes.” Big Bird tweeted out he had been getting vaccines since he was a “little bird.”
Is it possible that hallucinations are a side effect of the vaccination? We spotted Big Bird talking to his imaginary friend, Mr. Snuffeupagus, again.
We are sorry. Got distracted. Return to the original subject
Anyway, Big Bird got vaccinated at the end of that little television special, and of course the Internet – which is made up almost entirely of people who are not Sesame Street’s target audience – lost its mind over it.
I… can’t bring myself to be terribly outraged, though. Like I said, Sesame Street’s target audience doesn’t use Twitter and CNN barely has an audience at all. Most of you reading this have gotten vaccinated but don’t believe in the need for the government to mandate it, or you are hesitant about the vaccine for myriad reasons. It is extremely unlikely that you will be affected by the Sesame Street messages here, regardless of how your feelings or vaccine status.
Your bigger worry, though, may be for your kids, but at the end of the day, if they’re watching Sesame Street then they are under 18 and your consent is still required for them to be vaccinated. What’s more, you as parents spend far more time with your kids than your television screens do (hopefully), so talking with your kids and explaining to them why they aren’t vaccinated is important.
It is an even more sad commentary about society that Big Bird was called in to do this special. CNN, I believe, was the better choice. CNN can’t get adults to watch their network, much less kids. CNN already has a majority of its audience who are pro-vaccine, so it is absurd to think that CNN could convince everyone. It would have been more effective if they’d dropped this video on SnapChat and run with it there. This might have worked for something else than angering Twitter.
…Which, to be fair, is pretty easy to do anyway.
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