‘Leave Elmo alone’: Dems use ‘Sesame Street’ characters to brutally mock ‘goofy’ MTG hearing

Wednesday, March 26 found the House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency (DOGE) holding a hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable,” which addressed the use of tax dollars for public broadcasting. The witnesses included PBS President Paula Kerger and National Public Radio (NPR) President Katherine Maher, with questioning from House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky).The subcommittee is being chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), a far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist who supported QAnon in the past.In an article published on March 26, The Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich describes ways in which Greene went out of her way to make the hearing “goofy” — and the ways in which Democrats appeared to be making fun of her by naming characters on the long-running children’s show “Sesame Street,” which debuted on National Education Television (NET) in 1969 and has been on PBS since 1970.READ MORE: ‘Game over’: Yale fascism expert moving to Canada because US is becoming a ‘dictatorship’When the hearing started, Greene declared, “Today, we are looking at the more than half a billion dollars federal taxpayers spend annually to fund public radio and television.” And she attacked PBS and NPR as having a “communist agenda” that included “sexualizing and grooming children.”Rep. Stephen F. Lynch (D-Massachusetts) mocked the hearing, saying members of Congress should not be using their power to “go after the likes of Elmo and Cookie Monster” — a reference to two famous “Sesame Street” characters.”If shame was still a thing,” Lynch added, “this hearing would be shameful.”Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), similarly, commented, “To borrow a phrase from ‘Sesame Street,’ the letter of the day is ‘C’ — for corruption. Leave Elmo alone!’READ MORE: ‘Embarrassing’: House Oversight chair mocked after NPR president corrects him on basic journalism Read the full Atlantic article at this link (subscription required).

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