Maybe Sesame Street is Playing the May Sweeps

PBS is transforming the Cookie Monster. Just in time to coincide with the CDC's admission that the risk of obesity has been overblown. Link. Excerpts from column:

After three decades, [PBS] announced he's not a Cookie Monster at all. In the interests of teaching kids not to be gluttons, CTW has transformed Cookie Monster into just another monster who happens to like cookies.

Sesame Street and its defenders say they are just trying to do their bit in the war against child obesity. That's nice. But at what price? The whole point of the Cookie Monster character was to have a character who was silly because he ate so much. If Cookie Monster were a Greek god, he'd be the god of gluttony. Wouldn't it have been more honest and simply better to implore kids not to be too much like the Cookie Monster rather than make the Cookie Monster like everyone else? We all understand we shouldn't be like Oscar the Grouch.