How not to influence children
We have this post on PETA attempting to convince 8th graders that Fish are Friends[hat tip: LlamaButchers], and this article on Sesame Street revamping Cookie Monster into a more positive message for kids - "A Cookies is a Sometimes food." [hat tip: Scott Kurtz]. Fortunately, sounds like the 8th graders ignored the idiot dressed in a fish suit. Cookie monster? I dunno. It's clear Sesame Street can have an effect on kids, but I tend to think of it as an educational effect [the letter c, the number 6, this is what we do when there is a fire]. I don't think a healthier cookie monster would have had any effect on my weight growing up, and the whole talking vegetables thing is odd. But after all, children's obesity is the crisis of the month, so we must do whatever we can to fix it. Update: Scott Kurtz's PvP gets it right:

How about instead, we have Big Bird sing that "Parenting isn't a sometimes job."

- posted by owlish @ 4/08/2005 03:40:00 PM