Debbie Schlussel: Sesame Street & Bangladeshi Islamists
On Monday, a ferry in central Bangladesh, carrying about 70 people home for an end of Ramadan (Eid Al-Fitr) celebration, hit a cargo boat and capsized in the Meghna River. At least 15 of the Muslims aboard were killed, and several others remain missing.
If this happened in the United States to non-Muslims (as did Hurricane Katrina), the Bangladeshi Islamists would say (as many Islamists did) that the people died because they were Infidels, and Allah is showing his wrath. Or some such other extremist vitriol.
But since it happened in Bangladesh, we Infidels won't say something like that about the Bangladeshis who populate what is now one of the key states in Jihad Central.
We note this because Bangladesh is still extremist, even though Sesame Street came to town. Last night on PBS a/k/a "Palestinian Broadcasting System," an insipid 1.5 hour long program, "Independent Lens: The World According to Sesame Street," showed us how the Sesame Workship people came to town in three parts of the world and, well, didn't change much of anything.
They came to Kosovo and made separate shows for Serbs and Muslims, trying to force them to "understand" each other. But that didn't stop Muslims from taking over the whole joint. They came to Africa and taught kids that you, too, can be HIV-positive. We cringed at the scene where 3-year-olds were watching the HIV muppet, Khami, telling another muppet that he is looking through a memory box of his mother because she's dead of AIDS. Don't kids get a childhood anymore? Not in the world according to Sesame Workshop.
Then, the Sesame people came to the extremists of Bangladesh. Except we're not shown that they are Islamists or extremists. They are just nice people with an accent on PBS. The show goes out of it's way to tell us that, due to stricter immigration rules after 9/11 (as if . . .), the Bangladeshis didn't have enough time to get the proper visas to come to New York "to learn the Sesame process." And they had to suffer and go to Africa to learn it there, instead. Pity.
Alas, after struggling with the political machinations of the Islamist Bangladeshi regime, "Sisimpur" (their Sesame Street) makes it on the air to government acclaim, etc. Nice to see it didn't teach them anything about tolerance whatsoever, since journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury is facing a repeat prison term there and even the death penalty for daring to praise Israel and trying to visit. And, by the way, our tax money is funding this absurd Sesame Street project, through USAID (U.S. Agency for International Development).
Well, scientists were right when they said "Sesame Street" doesn't teach kids how to read, just how to become addicted to television watching. And it also doesn't teach tolerance to Islamists either.
"Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?"
Answer: 50 miles east 'til you smell it. 100 miles north 'til you step in it.
Posted by Debbie on October 25, 2006 04:13 PM to Debbie Schlussel