The Muppets vs. Fox News: What the Hell?!
Mon, December 5, 2011 Chalk this one up for the lovers, the dreamers...and the nitwits.
Fox Business News gave Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert an early Christmas present over the weekend when they accused The Muppets of brainwashing children with an anti-capitalist message.
Yeah, that's right. The Muppets. The source of their disdain? This guy:
No, not Bobo the Bear. And not Uncle Deadly, either. They're talking about millionaire oil baron Tex Richman, who's played by Chris Cooper. In The Muppets, Richman plans to tear down the old Muppet studios so he can drill for oil. While most people would classify anyone who wants to tear down the Muppet studios for any reason as an evil bastard, the folks at Fox Business News' Follow the Money seem to feel that this is yet another of example of liberal Hollywood trying to demonize the rich and successful.
You can watch this seven minutes of asinine madness below, courtesy of MediaMatters:
So yeah...that happened. And am I the only one who found that even harder to take seriously when they're spewing this while clips of dancing chickens are playing alongside them?
Now, a few things to review here:
First, the obvious: They went after The Muppets? Really?! What the hell?
Secondly, have any of these people actually seen this movie? Tex Richman isn't the villian because he's a successful millionaire in the oil industry...he's a bad guy because he's a jerk. He not only wants to destroy Muppet Studios, he's planning to enjoy destroying Muppet Studios. It's not an environmental message about the evils of the oil industry, it's a purely sentimental one about the Muppets trying to save their studios. And Tex is one mean guy about it. He instructs his two henchmen to maniacally laugh whenever he reveals his plans. He even raps about having so much money that he gold-plated his own cat. That's not nice!
Third, at what point in The Muppets are the rich considered evil? Kermit is living in a mansion. Miss Piggy is the fashion editor for Vogue and lives in Paris. Scooter is working at Google. Gonzo has a successful plumbing business. Even Rowlf has a nice house with a hammock. And when they need to raise $10 million to save their studio, they work to get the cash by putting on a show - they don't go askng for a bailout! And worse, when it looks like they may get the money, Tex Richman tries to sabotage their show.
How does that not make him the bad guy? Oh, that's right...it does make him the bad guy. And he's not all that different from Doc Hopper, the bad guy from 1979's The Muppet Movie. Doc Hopper owned a chain of successful frog's legs restaurants who chased down the Muppets after Kermit refused to be his company's spokes-frog. Was that an anti-business message too? I was five years old the first time I saw that movie, and even then I knew the reason he was a bad guy was because he was hurting frogs, and not because he had a successful business. I'm guessing today's five-year-olds have been smart enough to know why Tex Richman is no good either.
It's worth pointing out that The Muppets was released by The Walt Disney Company...who's hoping that this film breathes new life into the Muppets franchise, so they can sell lots of videos and toys and theme park merchandise. Sounds like a pretty pro-business move to me.
Of course, it's also worth pointing out that Fox is a corporaton too. And coincidentally, they have a new Alvin & the Chipmunks movie coming out in a few weeks. So I'm sure it was no coincidence at all that they needed to come up with a manufactured controversy about something as innocent and fun as The Muppets (how different are they from those commie evironmentalist penguins in Happy Feet, really?) to convince families to consider saving their movie money for that instead? Sounds plausible...although Alvin is destined to easily outgross The Muppets at the box offce anyway, so why even bother?
But instead of making a valid point, they wound up sounding just like this:
He may have been gone a long time now, but it looks like Jim Henson foretold the coming of 24-hour cable news nonsense before any of us did.
It also appears these geniuses took a few swipes at Sesame Street as well (no Elmo, you're not getting out of this unscathed), since that show had the audacity to acknowledge the current economic crisis by introducing a poverty-stricken Muppet in a prime-time special.
The nerve! Sesame Street doing something that...it's been doing for years, whether it was when they were explaining the death of Mr. Hooper to Big Bird in 1983, or helping Elmo getting over being scared after a fire (which aired in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks), and done beautifully so. That's what Sesame Street does. Yes, it's about numbers and letters of the day, and how to play and share your toys (and that cookies are awesome). But it's also always been about how people who come from different backgrounds and are of different shapes and sizes can live together. And how things can still be ok in a world where sometimes things are confusing and sad.
It's no different than how the Muppets handled the sudden death of Jim Henson in a tribute special that aired in 1990:
That was always the beauty of the Muppets. They taught that you can take what life throws at you and find a way to move on, find a way to laugh, and make sure you do it surrounded by the people you love.
The Fox story claims that the Occupy Wall Street protests are made up of children raised with a sense of entitlement because the Muppets and Sesame Street taught them that businesses are evil. I don't think that's true. I'm certainly not going to get into the politics of that whole thing, but I do believe that one truly great thing we did get from the Muppets and Sesame Street generation was the awesomeness that was The Muppets.
Nearly everyone who worked on the new Muppet film grew up on those shows (includng Fraggle Rock), and they brought to this movie just about everything that made the original Muppets great. The Muppets was funny as hell, it was silly, it was even poignant when it dealt with how to embrace a world that had moved on without them. They realized that they were a family no matter what, and like the movie's catchy new song says, The Muppets reminded everyone that "life's a happy song when there's someone by your side to sing along."
Leave it to a branch of Fox News to try to screw that up and find something sinister about it.
Thankfully, it looks like it backfired...bloggers have been in a downright hilarious rage over this all day, and the Twitterverse has been holding the Muppets in a mock congressional trial under the hashtag #GOPMuppetHearings. My favorite so far: "Mr. Grover, can you tell me WHICH one of these things is not like the other and why? Please remember you're under oath.#GOPMuppetHearings"
So...manufactured controversy or not, it certainly seems like some news pundits could have used a little more Muppets in their own childhoods. I'm certainly glad the Muppets were part of mine.
Reader Comments (2)
I've been saying this for years now, but if they ever made a Bill O'Reilly biopic, Chris Cooper would be the man for the job! Maybe he doesn't have the right look, but when it comes to playing driven, stern, bolshy (hey, a commie word!) authority (or aufauxity in O'Reilly's case) figures, there is no other actor more convincing than he!
Gotta love the irony of that one guy bringing up The Day After Tomorrow, too... it being a Fox movie and all.
Idiots.
Meanwhile, kids in other countries are starving, wars are going on, and about a thousand more relevant issues than The Muppets "brainwashing" people.