Should Bert and Ernie Marry on Sesame Street?

Should Bert and Ernire get married?

  • Yes

    Votes: 27 21.4%

  • No

    Votes: 66 52.4%

  • Not sure

    Votes: 9 7.1%

  • They should both marry Shemp

    Votes: 24 19.0%
  • Total voters
    126
  • Poll closed .
jayh said:
Bert and Ernie are childlike characters that the young children identify with. Totally different.
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See, that's the problem. As a child, I identified with Ernie. My mother had to move heaven and earth to find me a rubber ducky like his (this was before the Internet existed and you could order anything you can imagine delivered right to your door). And I turned out gay! Clearly, Bert and Ernie are already influencing children with their gay agenda. Therefore they should get married, so at least the children will grow up to be monogamous, married gays rather than sexy single gays like me who threaten the social order with their hot sexiness.
 
TragicMonkey said:
See, that's the problem. As a child, I identified with Ernie. My mother had to move heaven and earth to find me a rubber ducky like his (this was before the Internet existed and you could order anything you can imagine delivered right to your door). And I turned out gay! Clearly, Bert and Ernie are already influencing children with their gay agenda. Therefore they should get married, so at least the children will grow up to be monogamous, married gays rather than sexy single gays like me who threaten the social order with their hot sexiness.
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Not sure how tongue-in-cheek you are being, but the point. The child-like characters on the show should not be getting married or engaging in sexuality. It's fine if that's presented as adult behavior.
 
jayh said:
Not sure how tongue-in-cheek you are being, but the point. The child-like characters on the show should not be getting married or engaging in sexuality. It's fine if that's presented as adult behavior.
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I'm fairly depraved, but even I think that Sesame Street should avoid showing adults engaging in sex.
 
TragicMonkey said:
I'm fairly depraved, but even I think that Sesame Street should avoid showing adults engaging in sex.
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Sure, but it's just an opinion with no basis or reason to suppose it's a good opinion or why anyone else should agree. We can't rely on child psychologists to tell us what is in the best interests of children as there is no way to assess well being. Torturing a child is arbitrarily just as good or bad as not torturing a child. We can't rely on the observations of pediatricians. Science isn't applicable to morality. It can't tell us what we should do so any decision about sexuality and children is simply a matter of opinion. And god knows we can't simply take a vote as that would be argument ad populum. In the end we have no basis to decide.

FTR: I don't believe any of that.
 
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RandFan said:
Sure, but it's just an opinion with no basis or reason to suppose it's a good opinion or why anyone else should agree. We can't rely on child psychologists to tell us what is in the best interests of children as there is no way to assess well being. Torturing a child is arbitrarily just as good or bad as not torturing a child. We can't rely on the observations of pediatricians. Science isn't applicable to morality. It can't tell us what we should do so any decision about sexuality and children is simply a matter of opinion. And god knows we can't simply take a vote as that would be argument ad populum. In the end we have no basis to decide.

FTR: I don't believe any of that.
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Sheesh, threadstalking much?

Clearly that post was a joke on the misinterpretation of the previous post allowed by the sentence construction. Nobody was seriously suggesting Sesame Street show people actually having sex.

Secondly, I never said there was no way to judge wellness, just that there isn't a totally scientific one. Because some aspects of the human experience are not scientific, they are not accessible to science. This isn't a problem for anyone who doesn't think science is the only possible means of judgment. Sesame Street, for example, is not just educational, it's also performance art. There's a whole separate dimension to it right there, and it is not a scientific one in the least. One could argue that a marriage between Bert and Ernie would be a bad move artistically, as it would upset the existing relationships amongst the characters by throwing their own relationship statuses into question, drawing the audience into areas of speculation outside the intended focus of the creators.
 
I always saw Bert and Ernie as brothers, and about the same age as the target audience. In fact, I would say that I don't see any good reason to interpret them otherwise.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Secondly, I never said there was no way to judge wellness, just that there isn't a totally scientific one.
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Isn't "totally" scientific? Moving goal posts?

I'm sorry but you just are not making sense. You go from "no way" to "some way" and "of course there is a way". Could you make up your mind? How do we decide what is right? If we can scientifically show that pathology and maladaptive behavior are the result of neglect and abuse isn't that a basis to decide that children shouldn't be neglected and abused?
 
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Safe-Keeper said:
Why would anyone have a problem with that? Naive rhetorical question, I know, because I know a lot of people would, but a transgender person is just a guy in a girl's body, or the other way around. Nothing kids wouldn't be able to handle.
Oh, no, wait, that's all about sex, too, right?
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I wasn't thinking about sex at all, but gender roles are about sex to some degree.

If a character is presented as transgender, I think that is not age-appropriate for the Sesame Street age group. I don't know any kids that seem developmentally equipped to handle this complex issue at that age.

If a character is simply presented as a guy, children wouldn't know the difference.
 
I think they should be puppets teaching kids to count and should be devoid of any sort of sexuality at all.
 
MatildaGage said:
I wasn't thinking about sex at all, but gender roles are about sex to some degree.

If a character is presented as transgender, I think that is not age-appropriate for the Sesame Street age group. I don't know any kids that seem developmentally equipped to handle this complex issue at that age.

If a character is simply presented as a guy, children wouldn't know the difference.
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Actually, most kids are confused about gender to start with. There was a funny study where they explained the physical differences between men and some, but kids still were thrown off by a naked guy with a female hair style. I am not sure why people want to stop kids from being "confused" about so many issues. You are just laying the groundwork for them to be confused later, and they probably were confused or unclear about the concepts already. Many kids will say that they want to marry their dads or other odd relations.
 
RandFan said:
Isn't "totally" scientific? Moving goal posts?

I'm sorry but you just are not making sense. You go from "no way" to "some way" and "of course there is a way". Could you make up your mind? How do we decide what is right? If we can scientifically show that pathology and maladaptive behavior are the result of neglect and abuse isn't that a basis to decide that children shouldn't be neglected and abused?
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Yeah, that's so what this thread is about. Please stop bringing up the contents of that thread in this because I posted in both. I'm sorry I ever engaged you in conversation. I will not be making that mistake again.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Yeah, that's so what this thread is about. Please stop bringing up the contents of that thread in this because I posted in both. I'm sorry I ever engaged you in conversation. I will not be making that mistake again.
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I never attacked you personally. I never used fallacy or bullied you but that's fine. I'll ignore you.
 
TragicMonkey said:
See, that's the problem. As a child, I identified with Ernie. My mother had to move heaven and earth to find me a rubber ducky like his (this was before the Internet existed and you could order anything you can imagine delivered right to your door). And I turned out gay! Clearly, Bert and Ernie are already influencing children with their gay agenda. Therefore they should get married, so at least the children will grow up to be monogamous, married gays rather than sexy single gays like me who threaten the social order with their hot sexiness.
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I, too, identified with Ernie. My mom, too, needed to hunt down a rubber ducky.

I turned out to be straight. Or, better, was straight to begin with. Still had a baby doll as a child. One of those that you could give the bottle and peed. Still stayed straight.

Like all anecdotal evidence, means exactly jack ****.
 
elgarak said:
Like all anecdotal evidence, means exactly jack ****.
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No way, it's the best evidence for understanding why people feel and think the way they do.

Case in point, the number of people in this thread that saw Bert and Ernie as brothers or children was very interesting. It's really irrelevant if they were specifically created to be friends if there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise.

/rant
 
Furcifer said:
It's really irrelevant if they were specifically created to be friends if there's enough anecdotal evidence to suggest otherwise.
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I disagree, the creater/author is the final arbiter on the meaning of their creation. If others see things in it that the creator/author doesn't and didn't mean, then applying that meaning, especially after the creator/author has specifically stated that it is wrong, is total fail, and anyone doing that, even if there are a lot of them, is wrong.
 
PhantomWolf said:
I disagree, the creater/author is the final arbiter on the meaning of their creation. If others see things in it that the creator/author doesn't and didn't mean, then applying that meaning, especially after the creator/author has specifically stated that it is wrong, is total fail, and anyone doing that, even if there are a lot of them, is wrong.
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The problem is simple. You do not speak for anyone especially the creator/author (if he or she even exists).
 
PhantomWolf said:
I disagree, the creater/author is the final arbiter on the meaning of their creation. If others see things in it that the creator/author doesn't and didn't mean, then applying that meaning, especially after the creator/author has specifically stated that it is wrong, is total fail, and anyone doing that, even if there are a lot of them, is wrong.
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It doesn't matter though, if Bert and Ernie came out as gay, and a majority of people felt it was wrong for two brothers to have an intimate relationship with one another the damage is done.

In the court of public opinion the majority and not the creators rule. There's enough people here who said they thought Bert and Ernie were kids to not consider having them come out as a married gay couple.
 
PhantomWolf said:
I disagree, the creater/author is the final arbiter on the meaning of their creation. If others see things in it that the creator/author doesn't and didn't mean, then applying that meaning, especially after the creator/author has specifically stated that it is wrong, is total fail, and anyone doing that, even if there are a lot of them, is wrong.
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Demonstrate the creator/author and we can talk. Other than that it's a silly point.
 
RandFan said:
Demonstrate the creator/author and we can talk. Other than that it's a silly point.
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Not at all. PhantomWolf was referring to the writers of Sesame Street, not some mythical Creator.
I think it's a pretty well established fact that Sesame Street has writers (and a creator. Who is a dead guy with a beard and who is worshipped by many, go figure).
Now if you'd want to argue the principle of 'death of the author' and say we can only deduce meaning from the material itself and not from the intentions of its creator, that's another discussion. But I think it's safe to say Sesame Street has creators. (Of course it also 'evolved' over the years ;) )
 
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