C is for 'Cookie,' Dammit!

From Ben's Blog:

Read online that the latest season of Sesame Street will focus more on a health angle.

Think Sesame Street's Cookie Monster and think ... broccoli? In a fit of drastic behavior modification, the cookie-addicted bundle of fur is declaring that cookies are, in fact, only a "sometime food."

Am I a purist for thinking this is wrong? It's Cookie Monster. What he does is eat cookies, among other things. (Let's face it, he's the show's garbage disposal, w/c is probably why Oscar the Grouch never had him as a houseguest). That's what he is, googly eyes and all. What next, Big Bird as a poster child for gigantism?

(On a side note, I'm surprised the conservative Christian groups that accused Spongebob Squarepants of being gay didn't hurl accusations at Big Bird first. C'mon, it's Big, naked yellow bird w/ a high pitched voice. And if you dressed up 2 guys in Big Bird's and Spongebob's clothes --as in one in a shirt and tie with... square pants, and the other in yellow feathers and orange leggings with pink horizontal stripes-- who do you think's gonna be mistaken for gay?)

Sesame Street's producers should leave the Big CM alone. I mean, this is the guy who would eat the safe Ernie locked the cookies in, or Kermit the Frog's microphone during an interview. Hell, when he plays Alistaire Cookie for Monsterpiece Theater he eats his pipe in the end. What sane parent would even think that Cookie Monster was someone to emulate in terms of eating healthy?

I'm all for the show leaning towards a health angle, but maybe they should limit it to the human characters, or at least the humanoid muppets (Bert, Ernie, Sherlock Hemlock, etc.). Just let the monsters be the monsters that we know and love. Num num num num num...