Well, to paraphrase Chief Justice John Roberts, the way to stop treating people differently for having autism is to stop treating people differently for having autism.ĭavid Benkof is a columnist for The Daily Caller. Writer Christine Ferraro told The Washington Post she would love the character “to be not Julia, the kid on Sesame Street who has autism. He’s different”?īizarrely, Sesame Street creators are saying they already know that. She’s different” – just like for nearly 50 years it’s been “Bert talks a lot about bottle caps and doesn’t always understand jokes. She’s different.” Why can’t it be “Julia likes to flap her arms and has trouble maintaining eye contact. The lesson of accepting and welcoming children’s different social and emotional styles does not require the stigma that comes with saying “Julia has autism. Autism is a spectrum mental illness whose manifestations are so diverse that it’s often said “If you’ve met one person with autism, you’ve met one person with autism.” Julia’s autism doesn’t require a label any more than Oscar needs to be tagged with Hoarding Disorder or the Count with OCD. Muppets have different food preferences and gender expressions, but do we really need a vegan Muppet – or a transgender one? The Julia phenomenon, however, is part of a troubling American trend that fetishes identity rather than celebrating diversity in the broadest sense. Of course, in some cases, Sesame Street needed to specifically teach about differences, such as when the blind Muppet Aristotle showed Big Bird how reading Braille works, or when deaf human Linda used sign language. That means he has had to struggle with racism his whole life in a way that Muppets may not understand.” That means she speaks Spanish at home and probably has many brothers and sisters” or “Gordon is black. Sesame Street was a pioneer in broadcasting likeable urban characters of many ethnic backgrounds, but their identities were never patronized or problematized: “Maria is Puerto Rican. Same with many other differences, especially race. The show has embraced them all from the beginning, no labels required. So she does things a little differently.”īut all the characters on the show do things a little differently – from trash-obsessed Oscar the Grouch to Count von Count’s drive to, well, count everything. Shop Target for Sesame Street snacks and products at great prices. As the most popular character on the show said in an online storybook, “Elmo’s daddy told Elmo that Julia has autism. Take your little one on an adventure with Elmo and friends. Regarding Julia, though, the preschool-aged Muppets are being encouraged to treat her with unusual attentiveness because of her autism. His roommate and best friend Ernie was particularly accommodating. He was accepted for his quirks, and his fellow human and Muppet performers learned to adjust to his special needs. Over five decades, the show never pathologized Bert’s social differences. Like many autistic children, his food preferences draw on texture and color as much as taste – in his case oatmeal, unflavored fizzy water, and other bland foods.Billboard Hot 100 with his song " Rubber Duckie", in September 1970. He and Ernie both had their own video, The Best of Ernie and Bert, and their own album, Bert and Ernie's Greatest Hits. Bert's best known song is "Doin' the Pigeon". Jacobson joined Sesame Street in 1994.īert's age has never been defined, but performer on Sesame Street Live, Taylor Morgan, has said that "I just kind of try to think like a six year old or a seven year old, because that's how old Bert is." He and his roommate Ernie form a comic duo that is one of the program's centerpieces, with Bert acting as the world weary foil, to Ernie's naive troublemaking.Īs the duo often sing in their skits, several albums were released, containing studio recorded versions of their songs. Bert has also made cameo appearances within The Muppets franchise, including The Muppet Show, its second pilot episode The Muppet Show: Sex and Violence, The Muppet Movie, and The Muppets Take Manhattan, in addition to an appearance with Ernie on The Flip Wilson Show on September 14, 1972, on which he sang "Clink, Clank", a song about noises. Since 1999, Muppeteer Eric Jacobson has been phased in as Bert's primary performer. Bert was originally performed by Frank Oz. Sesame Street Test Pilot 1 (July 21, 1969)īert is a yellow Muppet character on the long running PBS and HBO children's television show Sesame Street. Ernie and his rubber duckie with Bert (pictured on right) on Sesame Street in 1977.
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