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Dublin: 10 °C Sunday 19 May, 2013

Is Sesame Street’s ‘left wing propaganda’ teaching ethnic groups civil disobedience?

A new book alleges a liberal, left-wing bias in some of US television’s most popular programmes including Sesame Street and Friends which broadcast “secret political messages”.

Is Elmo peddling secret political messages?
Is Elmo peddling secret political messages?
Image: Richard Drew/AP/Press Association Images

A NEW BOOK is alleging that popular television programmes like ‘Sesame Street’, ‘Friends’ and ‘Happy Days’ are pushing a liberal, left-wing agenda.

Author and right-wing columnist Ben Shapiro claims in Primetime Propaganda that Hollywood has been secretly using television shows to promote a “radical” left-leaning political agenda.

He claims he has evidence to prove how television executives have tried to use TV to “shape America in their own leftist image.”

The Miami Herald Sun reports that in the book Shapiro claims that the children’s learning show ‘Sesame Street’ teaches ethnic groups civil disobedience and that ‘Friends’ undermines family values.

The book also says that ‘Macgyver’, the hit 80s action-adventure show, encourages Americans to think guns are bad.

Shapiro interviewed more than one hundred of the entertainment industry’s “biggest players”, according to publishers Harper Collins.

He writes that many insiders boast that not only is Hollywood biased against conservatives, but that many of the shows being broadcast have secret political messages.

It’s not the first time Sesame Street has been accused of left wing bias. In 2009 the show broadcast a segment mocking the conservative news channel Fox News, reports The Huffington Post.

The segment was later criticised by the Public Broadcasting Service ombudsman in the US who said that he “didn’t know what was in the head of the producers” and that they should not be telling people what to think “through the kids”, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Related: Did a throwaway Tweet reveal Sesame Street’s Bert as gay? >

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Comments (10 Comments)

  • Rightwing autopilot ideologues sling mud at Sesame Street and any other successful programme from PBS as a matter of principle, and a matter of routine. If you believe that public service broadcasting is innately evil and wrong, then picking fights with a children’s show that promotes literacy is what you do.

    Reply
    • Todays program is brought to you by the letters G and S and the numbers 8 and 180. G is for George and S is for Soros.
      8 is the number of dollars in billions that George has given to the Open Society Foundations. 180 is the number of media organisations that he has funded

      Reply
  • 30/05/11 #

    Communist Cookie Monster? Give us a break.

    Reply
  • Hollywood and the media are totally infiltrated with lefty ideologues. In other news, kittens are cute. Is this really a surprising bit of analysis?

    Reply
  • Trust me, I dont think left wing is pure. Quite the opposite. But this is total horseshit. There’s plenty of right and left wing “messages” on American television. If you are going to criticise one, you have to be big enough to criticise the other.

    Reply
  • The Business and Media Institute report that George Soros funds Books, newspapers, radio stations, TV stations, websites and cutting edge videos which reach all parts of the globe ,never mind Sesame Street.
    Scaring the hell out of little kids is a tactic straight from the Saul Alinsky handbook.

    Reply
  • Well, lets face it, the right wing “news” that comes out of most American networks needs some balance, doesnt it?

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    • On the contrary Dave Finn,the American media has for some years had a left-wing bias as had its educational system. It dates back to when all the liberals hide out in Canada leaving the honest Americans to to the fighting in Viet Nam.They then crawled out of the woods to take over the easy jobs in the media and academia and so the Progressive Movement gained control of the Fifth Estate .For now.
      You use the term “right wing ” as if the left was a pure and holy entity and incapable of the ruination which it has brought across the globe.

      Reply
  • Contrary to the view put across that Sesame Street is under attack in some way I would suggest that it is the people who use such programs to promote left wing ideology who need to examine their behavior.Brainwashing children is despicable and the example of that 10:10 outfit is sick in the extreme

    Reply

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