*blinks*

[hkellick]

And does anyone else think there's something... not right about Sesame Street introducing an HIV-positive character?

What will they have next? A transgendered character? perhaps a corrupt big businessman character? Perhaps a boy-molesting priest character?

I dunno, I'd have to see this character for myself, really, but I don't think this is necessarily a good thing.

Comments

[kolys.livejournal.com]

Oh, I /have/ to see a Child Molesting Priest character. THat's just too twisted.

"K is for kiddies, that's good enough for me..."

[lite.livejournal.com]

...
...
stay away from me ;)

[dawnstar.livejournal.com]

You /did/ start it yourself. :)

[lite.livejournal.com]

Yes.
But I didn't start singing "K is for kiddies"... ;)

[phinnia.livejournal.com]

I don't see anything wrong with it. This is an issue that children have to deal with and Sesame Street has always been sensitive to those types of issues. Twenty years ago they made the same fuss over them showing Downs' Syndrome and disabled characters. And now they're normally accepted. We can't expect children to be able to deal with situations that we give them no means to cope with, and we can't expect the next generation to turn out any better than this one if we keep hiding things in the closet.

[lite.livejournal.com]

Like I said, I'm willing to give it a try, but.. it seems.. I dunno...
I think there's an age where you start taking the skeletons out of the closet. I'm not sure the age when you watch Sesame Street is it.

[br0t.livejournal.com]

Plus, keep your pants on. It's only in South Africa, where one in nine kids has the damn virus.

[lite.livejournal.com]

No. Said character is supposed to make his or her way to the other Sesame Streets too. I'm willing to give it a try. It MIGHT be for the better... we'll see.

[pupcake.livejournal.com]

I find it disgusting that you're grouping HIV+ people in the same category as corrupt businessmen and child-molesting priests. It implies that you blame them for their status, and that's not fair. Maybe here, most people with HIV (and I still said most, not all) contracted it due to unsafe sex or unsafe drug use, but in Africa, where a huge percentage of childbearing women are HIV positive... children are born with the virus all the time. and the poverty there can make safe sex impossible, anyway. All Sesame Street is trying to do is teach a little tolerance, and maybe safety; those are useful skills at any stage of development.
It's too bad they didn't have that character when you were little.

[lite.livejournal.com]

Redoing this comment. The link I made doesn't seem to be working.
So I'll try to reexplain, in brief, why it bothers me.
I understand that in Africa, HIV is running rampant. I understand 1 of 9 kids there has it. I'm not sure that four and five year olds is the right target audience to give this message to.
I mean, let me put it to you this way. What do you say to a four or five year old if they ask "Where does HIV come from?"
Past that, how will a five year old know the difference between an HIV positive and HIV negative kid. How do you EXPLAIN that? They can act alike, look alike... do you really want to explain to five year old Billy that there are kids his age that will get a disease called AIDS and they'll die?
How do you bring up to these kids that there are many kids out there that are HIV positive?
I don't think that this is the right target audience. I think that, maybe, if they were to have a kid that's HIV positive and that's IT...and he's treated normally and it never gets brought up that he'll get AIDS and die and etc. etc. etc, only THEN is it a good thing for that age group.
As for my post, you read far too much into it. I was being sarcastic and that's all. I wasn't differentiating between the different groups. I wasn't making some statement that one is something kids can stop and one isn't. And it really irks the hell out of me you read it to be the old standard "Howard is just intolerant.". I have perfectly legitimate reasons to disagree with this, whether you agree with them or not.

[pupcake.livejournal.com]

There's a good chance that kids already know which of their peers have HIV - there's no way to protect children from it, in that environment; the only thing you can do is teach them about it. I mean, you don't have to explain sex and drugs if a child asks where HIV comes from... you could say that people get it from their mommies when they're born. or something like that. And anyway, I think it was Sesame Street's intention not to go into anything about dying, the character will just be a normal character but maybe will be a little extra careful in certain situations.

And sorry about dismissing you as intolerant - I don't do well interpreting sarcasm, especially on the 'net when tone of voice and body language are missing. And you've done enough generalizing in the past that it's not unreasonable for me to think back to the old standard. You have to pay attention to how your words come across, also. But ok, I hope we understand each other now

[lite.livejournal.com]

I can generalize, agreed, usually when I'm totally ticked off.
Anyways.. yeah, I think we understand each other.

[kareila]

I'm willing to give them the benefit on the doubt on this not having seen it myself. They've made good decisions in the past. (Except for Elmo.)

If they start featuring crackbabies I'll worry.

Then again maybe Elmo is the crackbaby.

[lite.livejournal.com]

Elmo's OK. He doesn't bother me at all.
He's not half as cool as Cookie Monster, though.
Or grover.
Grover's my other favorite muppet. :)

[dustkitten.livejournal.com]

My brother and I used to watch Elmo's World with Tash, and he'd always say,

"Baby, how do YOU smoke your crack?"