My Beef with Elmo: Elmo’s World Order?

Today is the 51st birthday of Sesame Street. The show first aired on November 10, 1969.

As a child growing up in the 1970s, I occasionally watched Sesame Street (produced by Sesame Workshop). The Electric Company captured my interest much more, as did Captain Kangaroo, Land of the Lost, and re-runs of Lost in Space. I didn’t watch much TV though. 

Before I proceed with my general grievances with Sesame Street, I just want to air my personal beef with the show — and with Elmo, in particular.

If you are a parent reading this, do you recall the first word your child(ren) spoke as an infant? Chances are, it was “Mama” or “Dada.” Sad to say, my daughter’s first word was “Elmo.” Yup. It’s actually very embarrassing for me to admit this. Twenty years ago, when my first child was born, we received, as a gift, a VHS tape of “Elmopalooza.” In my defense, a few of the songs were quite catchy — at least for that time (produced in 1998). Generally speaking, we did not watch much TV, but we did have a collection of VHS tapes, including the widely acclaimed and mass marketed “Baby Einstein” series — “Baby Mozart” and “Baby Bach.” Anyone remember those? Gosh knows what I was thinking. Needless to say, when my daughter gleefully said “Elmo” before uttering “Mama,” I was not enthralled. Triggered would be a bit strong. Nonetheless, it was a clear red flag, and within a few weeks, all vestiges of Elmo and Sesame Street were gone from our home. Subsequently, we removed all battery-operated and plastic toys. TV was nearly nonexistent.

Shortly after being personally “showed up” by Elmo, I purchased a book by Jane M. Healy called Endangered Minds: Why Children Don’t Think And What We Can Do About It. Healy had her own bone to pick with the muppets and their seemingly sly antics and intentions. She described the show as a “manipulative sensory assault,” a “peripatetic carnival,” and a “cacophony of vignettes that change, literally, by the minute.” Healy elaborated, “Muppets, people, objects, cartoons, cascade inexorably — each scene arrestingly novel and removed both visually and contextually from the last.” She continued, “The worst thing about Sesame Street is that people believe it is educationally valuable. It stands as a symbol of ‘good’ programming, an institutionalized excuse for ‘boob tube’ as baby-sitter.” I sensed Healy was spot-on, and in fact, the only boob tube that should have been present in my daughter’s life at that time was me — I was a breastfeeding superstar! Healy had even harsher words, “If children tell us they ‘love’ Sesame Street, we should not decide it is ipso facto good for them; we should more likely be concerned about what has been done to their brains that enables them to tolerate — much less enjoy — it!” Healy considered the show “a serious travesty of the educational enterprise particularly because it has assumed the mission and garnered parents’ trust.” Well, those muppets lost my support, and I was no longer willing to compete with their “brain-grabbing” programming. 

In terms of programming, my main contention with the show and its agitating slapstick-happy characters, is its seductive adeptness to capture and persuade young growing hearts and minds. Is it a coincidence that the co-founder of Sesame Workshop, Lloyd Morrisett, was an experimental psychologist, and the academic protegé of Carl Hovland? While at Yale in the late 1940s and into the 1950s, Hovland worked in “very important projects for the US military” and also for the Rockefeller Foundation. He was well known and highly respected for his work in studying persuasion, group dynamics, communication, and thought. Notably, during World War II, Hovland was recruited by the United States Department of Defense to supervise the soldier motivational training programs. He was greatly admired for his work in analyzing people’s resistance to changing their opinions and developing methods to overcome this. Oh, good on him, eh? That sounds like covert mind control to me.

The same year Sesame Street debuted, Morrisett became president of the Markle Foundation (a small nonprofit focused on medicine), where he concentrated on communications and information technology, as well as the development of simulation games. Interestingly, it is Morrisett who is known for coining the popularized term, “digital divide.”

It is helpful to see Morrisett’s business connections via this interactive map created by Alison McDowell of wrenchinthegears.com.

Since I don’t want to focus solely on Morrisett, I should probably mention very briefly the other co-founder of Sesame Workshop, Joan Ganz Cooney. How synchronous that reportedly her granddaughter’s first words were “Big Bird!” Looks like I am not the only one who has a daughter/granddaughter whose first words were the name of a Sesame Street character. I suppose it makes much more sense in her case.

Here is another interactive map created by Alison McDowell showing Cooney’s business connections.

Finally, I would like to discuss the current President of Global Impact and Philanthropy at Sesame Workshop, Sherri Rollins Westin. 

According to her LinkedIn bio, Westin was Assistant to the President for Public Liaison and Intergovernmental Affairs for President George H.W. Bush, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and held senior positions at the ABC Television Network and U.S. News & World Report. Westin currently serves on the board of directors of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition, and not surprisingly, is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, in addition to serving on the U.S. Afghan Women’s Council, and the Early Childhood Peace Consortium (ECPC) Advisory Board. 

In October 2020, Sherrie Westin glowingly spoke for 18 minutes about how this “pandemic” crisis has been an opportunity to completely overhaul the education system around the world: “The Great Reset: Resetting education with Sesame Street.” While most readers will notice both the nuanced and obvious reveals during this podcast sponsored by the World Economic Forum (WEF), it may be beneficial to listen to some vital commentary presented by educational researcher Lynne Taylor from https://www.commoncorediva.com. Taylor discusses in tandem with Tim Brown, author and editor at SonsOfLibertyMedia.com, crucial aspects surrounding the role of Sesame Street within the context of The Great Reset, in “The Muppet Propaganda Of The World Economic Forum’s Great Reset.” As openly disclosed in the dialogue between Taylor and Brown, their insights are framed within a Christian biblical world view. So that is something to keep in mind as you listen. While I do not subscribe to this particular perspective, I still resonate with most of the information presented, and I encourage readers to listen and absorb what resonates most with you. It is always a helpful cognitive exercise to continue to practice open-mindedness coupled with mental discernment (and old-fashioned gut instinct thrown in for good measure). 

Before I mention a few takeaways from the WEF podcast featuring Westin, I remind readers that this global restructuring (The Great Reset) involves much more than transforming the economy and education, as evidenced by the WEF COVID-19 Strategic Intelligence transformation map. 

My takeaways from Sherrie Westin’s presentation:

  • As muppet, Grover, stated in the beginning of the podcast, they are “resetting the entire world.” He elatedly added that muppets have “learned to have video play time.”
  • Westin emphasized that there is a huge digital divide (as coined by her Sesame Workshop predecessor Lloyd Morrisett). I perceive this as potential “code” for a need to get digital devices into the hands of all children around the world so as to digitally connect them to the “mainframe” to build out the prescribed Internet of Bodies.
  • Westin stated, “We are being forced to think more digitally AND to research the outcomes.” She reiterated that they could not do this without data and proving impact. This “datafication” paradigm, as laid out clearly by Alison McDowell in her discussion, “The Data Harvesting Of Children From Cradle To Grave” from September 2020, is intended to reflect social impact markets in which all children are placed on the digital blockchain and turned into data commodities, for the purpose of behavioral engineering. For more detailed background information, read McDowell’s brilliant analysis, “The Brothers Grim: Bill and Mike’s Pandemic Panopticon.”
  • In her own words, Westin admits the following about the role of Sesame Street and its muppet “role models”: “My theory is it’s like a Trojan horse. It’s not threatening . . . it’s a children’s show.” She added that it is “really about planting the seeds for societal change.”

So, let’s examine Elmo “planting seeds” in recent short video clips wherein he models “COVID-specific” messaging with respect to “COVID knowledge,” such as “resilience” and “health and hygiene” (as described by Westin in the aforementioned podcast from October 2020) . . . 

Here is Elmo’s one-minute Back to School PSA produced in September 2020, in which he is wearing his face mask and raving about “learning at home”:

Here is an animated version of Elmo in March 2020 teaching children how to wash hands with his “Washy Wash” song:

This is not Elmo’s first stint when it comes to slapstick-styled persuasive (and potentially duplicitous) content on behalf of pharmaceutical and digital agendas. Here he is in 2015 with Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy peddling vaccinations, and of course, the accompanying germ model: 

And here is Elmo with Dr. Murthy at Spotlight Health 2015, once again soliciting vaccines: 

On this momentous day, I wish you a happy birthday, Sesame Street. Just know that you will not be receiving any gifts or fanfare from me this year. 

And, to Elmo, you can continue to obsessively wash those muppet hands of yours, but I doubt it will wash away the globalist strings ostensibly attached to them. I want nothing to do with your world, nor your apparent world re-ordering aspirations. Please pass this message along to your technocratic muppet masters. Thank you.

Endnote:

For those who may consider this material to be light and fluffy given the muppet content, please make no mistake that these silly muppet mascots may have much more in store for the human population than what has been presented in this essay. One possible hint was revealed at “Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age – Session I. The Next Revolution in Learning” (hosted by Google in 2009). The relevant segment begins at the 19 minute, 43 second time stamp. Herein, our friendly muppet, Grover, jokes about how he can help teach kids new technology. Grover disclosed, “I think we could teach the children using iPhone . . . naps . . . it is easy, you can put lots of information on your iPhone, right? . . . Well, then you just have to take a nap with the iPhone next to your head and all that information in your phone will import directly into your sleepy little noggin . . . once I develop a USB port for the forehead, it will work like gangbusters.”

If readers think this is frivolous talk, I suggest listening to another Grover — Pulkit Grover (not a muppet), an assistant professor and researcher in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University — as he discusses brain-machine interface technology funded by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) in “Novel Strategies for Sensing and Stimulating the Brain Noninvasively and Precisely.” In 2019, Pulkit Grover and his research team received a $19.48 million grant to design a noninvasive neural interface that can be used as a wearable device. What a coincidence that this human Grover shares nearly the same intention as muppet Grover — to explore the union of control and communication by designing radically new neural interfaces. According to Pulkit Grover’s CV, he runs a neural sensing lab and gives live demonstrations of brain-machine interface games, and helped middle school students to build an app using brain-computer interfaces (BCIs). As one of six organizations to be awarded in DARPA’s “Next-Generation-Nonsurgical-Neurotechnology” (N3) program, Grover’s team aims to develop high-performance, bidirectional information flow. The multidisciplinary team’s interface is being developed by harnessing concepts in physics, biology, and engineering through electricity, ultrasound and light. But I am sure there is nothing to see here, right? I suppose I could just put my “sleepy little noggin” to rest . . .

References for Further Reading:

Sesame Street Offers “New Normal” Brainwashing for the Very Young and Vulnerable, October 26, 2020

Who Is Pulling The Muppet Strings? January 14, 2018

Sesame Street’s Elmo and Cookie Monster have turned into Covid teachers October 12, 2020

Resetting education: lessons from Sesame Street on helping a generation at risk. This week’s GreatReset podcast October 2, 2020

Sesame Street Rollout (Koche Sesame developed by Sesame Workshop and RAND Corporation) — Afghanistan, Spring 2004

IBM Watson and Sesame Workshop Introduce Intelligent Play and Learning Platform on IBM Cloud June 6, 2017

The Digital Divide and Its Implications for the Language Arts. ERIC Digest D153, July 2000

The ‘great reset’ meets the Internet of Bodies: manipulating human behavior with authoritarian surveillance

30 thoughts on “My Beef with Elmo: Elmo’s World Order?”

  1. Super great article Steph! Documentation is absolutely clear.

    My response to the Muppets, was seeing it manipulative, shallow and ugly.

    I had noticed similarly that Jim Carrey was steered early in his career by pharma agents. He arrived on the scene as a role model for the ADHD/Ritalin generation. Any kid mimicked his behavior would be diagnosed with ADHD.

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  2. Steph, you write, “Grover’s team aims to develop high-performance, bidirectional information flow.”

    Yea, that sums up also what is happening with COVID-19 BS, and the antithesis of Trump vs CNN, etc.

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  4. Good essay, Stephers. Just a few reflections, hopefully on topic. I am somewhat pleased that so many kids are being kept out of school. I asked if they were being clocked, that is, monitored when sitting in front of their home computers, and I am told no, that they can easily skip lessons, though I assume that the teacher can call on any one of them at any time. But anyway, the one kid I know doing this, his school day is over by 11:00 AM. This, to me, is good news, as schools monopolize time, taking up whole days and offering nothing in return, or as SK would say, operating as a warehouse.

    Margaret Mead said ” ‘My grandmother wanted me to have an education, so she kept me out of school.’ I am currently reading Deschooling Society” by Ivan Illich. It was written in 1970, and has had many reprints over time, but I don’t see that it has had any impact. He said a major illusion we suffer from is that learning is the result of teaching. I know that not to be true. I got virtually nothing out of high school, and in college learned my trade plus took one very useful course in logic, the only one like it offered.

    So teachers are not teaching. Students are not learning, not that way anyway. But school has a deep impact on them. It is mind control, brainwashing. Even as I was a lousy student in high school (dysfunctional family, could not focus), they still got to me. It would be age 38 before I broke free of my education. (“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all.”) (Paul Simon)

    Anyway, I view kids being out of school so much now as a wonderful opportunity for parents to home school. My idea of that would be something Noam Chomsky said that resonated with me years ago. He said that in recruitment of students (he’s supposedly a professor of linguistics at MIT), he would ignore those who got straight A’s in prior schooling. That does not show creativity, only the ability to please their teachers. “They’re boring,” he said. His idea of education was this metaphor: The kid throws out a rope, and then follows that rope wherever it leads. The teacher is a guide, but does not overrule the child’s curiosity or instincts. I guess my metaphor would be different – the kid is handed a torch, not a flashlight, and because its light goes in all directions, so too can he go in many directions. Let’s find out what lights the kid up.

    I used to follow a podcaster who made a big deal of John Taylor Gatto and Carroll Quigley – Gatto I don’t know about, but I know Quigley is a gatekeeper. But the podcaster was following Gatto’s advice on schooling tutoring a young boy, and said that his interest was in flying saucers and aliens. Who knows, but the guy said that he did not view it as his role to set the kid straight, but rather to let him explore. He came back to earth, and realized that he had gone far afield, all on his own. He made a mistake, a nice one, and learned. All by himself. That’s education. Had the tutor chided him, course-corrected him, set him straight, the kid would have missed an important educational opportunity.

    My education began the day I left school. We have a huge opportunity now to free these kids, get them away from their teachers, let them start the process of learning.
    Sorry to run long.

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    1. MT – Your comment resonates with me on many levels. I am completely on the same page as you, even literally speaking. I read Deschooling Society back in 2014, when my youngest daughter was “deschooling.” She was a “third-grade dropout”, as we like to joke. She deschooled for a couple of years, before transitioning into “unschooling” and what we called, “self-schooling” for the remainder of her “education” – that is, until starting “early college” last year at age 15. As a natural autodidact myself, and given that I am a de-institutionalist at-heart, I greatly admire the work of Ivan Illich. It has been years since I have given thought to his material. Wouldn’t you know though, I was only familiar with his brilliant criticism of the education system, and I had NO idea until today that he had much more to say about the perils of the medical system and iatrogenic illness. I am so glad you have reminded me of his work, and I just ordered a couple of his books in this regard. As I am now going back through Deschooling Society, I am reminded that he was one of the first to ever emphatically warn about elite technocrats. Given what I know now, I see his work in a much deeper and broader light, so thank you. If you are interested, I found an endearing video of him online that depicts an ultra compassionate (and obviously intellectual) man who clearly never received widespread praise. I can email it to you if you’d like. And as you said, sadly, his efforts seem to have been in vain.

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  6. You run i to many things that at first glance make no sense. I offer you one, origins of the name Elmo. Does it tie in? I do not know.

    “Originally a short form of Germanic names that began with the element helm meaning “helmet, protection”. It is also a derivative of ERASMUS, via the old Italian diminutive Ermo. Saint Elmo, also known as Saint Erasmus, was a 4th-century martyr who is the patron of sailors. Saint Elmo’s fire is said to be a sign of his protection.”

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    1. Thanks Steph. I don’t know why I tied into Illich, and kind if assumed that I got the reference from you. Apparently not. I am near the end of Deschooling, and taking it slow as it resonates so much. I also have sitting here Limits to Medicine, up next. Even though time has passed him by, his advice never taken, a mind is a mind. My mother used to watch Firing Line with William F. Buckley, and I remember her saying “I just like to watch minds at work.”

      Is there anything like that around anymore? I doubt it.

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      2. A couple more resources:
        Illich’s “Medical Nemesis” opened my eyes in the 70’s,
        as well as, “Confessions of a Medical Heretic,” Robert S. Mendelsohn, M.D.

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  7. “”Vaccines have information about germs.
    Antibodies are the best super-heroes EVER!
    Why doesn’t everybody get a vaccination?
    …that’s a gooood question, Elmo.

    Very nice Stephers. A little overwhelming, and I’m referring to the thickness of the propaganda blanket. Not having had TV for 25 years, I’ve lost track somewhat of what’s aimed at children. My son, born in 1998, obviously grew up without the tv, and family members were asked not to give any gifts of plastic. He hasn’t had tv to this day, but the prop… is thick for any age group.

    I have sadness about this reality, which I feel when I read this. It’s important to engage in work that helps give voice to a different message. Your (Stephers) heart is apparent in the work you do, and we appreciate it.

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  8. I don’t know what my first words were, but I’m told my first full sentence was, “Look, Mom, there’s Grover!” My mother wasn’t mortified by this, but I’ve always thought it was a little disconcerting.

    I look forward to digging into your further reading. While watching seemingly intelligent people believe everything their favorite TV propaganda hucksters tell them, I’ve thought about how shows like Sesame Street condition us for exactly the sort of mind control that makes the COVID scam possible.

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  9. Excellent article! I wish my parents would have been smarter and kept the TV out of the house. I remember liking the electric company, land of the lost, etc., much more than Sesame Street. I would very occasionally watch Sesame Street, but it was just to see the grouch in his trashcan.

    We don’t have a TV, just computers, but all the shit on youtube is just as poisonous. I’m constantly having to unlearn things for my kids, but it’s impossible to keep up, and it’s impossible, for me, to keep them from it. I’m at work all day and my wife is overwhelmed with homeschooling my youngest. I could only stomach the first video with Elmo. It’s so insidious! I noticed he said that this was a transition, not a temporary thing, but a transition!

    This online school is the worst. Put your 15yr old son in front of a computer to do homework! So stupid! We used to say no electronics while doing homework. Now it’s a constant battle to keep him from distractions while doing homework. The great thing about the situation though, is that we had to take our youngest out and homeschool him. My wife found that with online school, 11yr olds need someone sitting with them the entire time. We confirmed with other parents! My wife was doing all the work, and all of the work was mindless tasks with zero educational content. Homeschool was the only thing that made sense. I hope she keeps him out of school next year too.

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    1. Forbidding people from YouTube could enhance the interest to be on YouTube. Perhaps conversation and discrimination needs cultivation.

      A major problem with computer monitors is EMF radiation. RadioClear and Veilshield are see-through fabrics which are used to shield monitors. Rashes on the arm are a symptom, also heart palpitations and stroke. http://www.bioinitiative.org

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  10. If y0u watch this one minute PSA from Grover, see if you get the “soap joke” when he drops the bar of soap and then retrieves it. It’s disgusting if you get the innuendo (see urban dictionary definition below):

    https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=%22Don%27t%20drop%20the%20soap%21%22

    In the podcast featuring Sherrie Westin, she explains how they slip in adult humor because they know that adults are watching with their kids. My sense is it goes much deeper and more sinister than that. They know how the unconscious mind of a child operates.

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  11. Rather surprised nobody recalls the closing titles from early seasons of S.S. Even as a child something about this CTW logo was unsettling to me. I fortunately was born a little too early to be really swept into this program and only caught moments when younger kids were watching.

    Seems to be Baphomet hanging out on the bottom (where else). An idle mind is whose workshop, again?

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  12. I see Elmo is back at it again – time for Elmo and his fellow muppets to canvass on behalf of their technocratic handlers . . .

    November 5, 2021, “Sesame Street’s Rosita gets her first Covid-19 vaccine dose” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/video/sesame-streets-rosita-gets-her-first-covid-19-vaccine-dose/vp-AAQm7sv

    “Characters from Sesame Street talk to CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Erica Hill about the children’s Covid-19 vaccine. For more tune into The ABC’s of Covid Vaccines: A CNN/Sesame Street Town Hall for Families hosted by CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Erica Hill along with Sesame Street’s Big Bird, Elmo and Friends. Saturday, November 6 at 8:30am ET on CNN.”

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    1. We are dealing with psychopaths, you know. Also, Republicans and conservatives are not very good at back-lashing. I think it is because they are civil human beings, while the Covid/Climate crowd are not.

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  16. Would I be “out of line” for noting a curious sync with the “Astroworld tragedy” (potentially imaginary in many regards) being reported simultaneously with the current “deployment” of the muppets? https://dcweekly.org/2021/11/06/cnn-deploys-sesame-street-muppets-to-promote-vaccines-to-children/. As a reminder . . . “The Pied Piper of Astroworld was a television special which was broadcast over ABC on December 28, 1968.[1] The special was hosted by Soupy Sales as the Pied Piper, who led a group of children around the Astroworld amusement park in Houston.” The 1968 “Astroworld” special featured the muppets.

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    1. There are plenty of “Pied Piper” references that could be invoked in both synchronous events: From Travis Scott playing the role of the “pied piper” and “casting a musical spell” over the fainting/unconscious/dying (young) audience members, to Big Bird being the “pied piper” – leading the young children to their salvation (demise?). It’s all very twisted if you consider the occult implications.

      My seemingly obscure point about Travis Scott being a pied piper is echoed here by an alleged concertgoer: “It all started with the timer and the very odd and slightly scary music, noise that was being played on his stage,” Sierra told CNN. “The noise sounded like something you could get hypnotized with and the countdown or timer would end and then start again.”

      When Scott appeared, the crowd began “raging,” she said. “I truly thought that if I fell it would’ve been the end of me. I spent at least 15 minutes just getting pushed around due to mosh pits or simply because people were ‘raging,'” Sierra said. “I then saw a girl probably 17-18 getting carried out of the crowd who was passed out already. I saw a kid probably 14-15 who could not breathe, a girl who was probably 16 crying because she too could not breathe. In total, I saw about 20 people who could not breathe getting out of the crowd and I saw one person in front of me have a seizure.”
      https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/astroworld-houston-deaths-travis-scott/index.html.

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  18. Oh, Elmo. Shame. Shame. Shame.

    https://time.com/6192587/a-little-pinch-but-it-was-ok-elmo-gets-vaccinated-against-covid-19/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=health_covid-19&linkId=171368880

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/entertainment/tv/2022/06/30/elmo-covid-shot-vaccine-sesame-street/7778637001/

    https://babylonbee.com/news/elmo-dies-of-myocarditis-after-receiving-covid-vaccine (SATIRE alert)

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    1. A few months back, a hang-on-the-knob flyer was left on my door, starting out with the phrase “It’s ok to have questions about the covid-19 vaccine”.

      They seem to know something about me.

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