"Sally Starr is an icon, and she will always be remembered as an icon. She was someone who was pure."

"Her persona was always Sally Starr. She understood the importance of being a personality on and off the air. She was always in costume. She represented the true style of what it was to be a personality."

Goodbye to Sally Starr, who died 2 days before her 90th birthday. When I think of days in the 1950s in front of the television, I think of "Popeye Theater" and Sally Starr, "your gal Sal," forever in our hearts!

"At precisely the moment when gay people’s right to marry seems to be reaching a positive tipping point, sexuality is being driven back into the closet..."

"... as something shameful and incompatible with honor (in the case of Petraeus) or decency (as in the case of Clash)... [Kevin Clash] has not been convicted of a crime, but merely accused of one in a completely unsubstantiated, vague complaint."

Said lawprof Katherine Franke. Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, is accused, in a civil lawsuit seeking $5 million, of having "sexual activity" with a 15-year-old.

"MY FUTURE IS BRIGHT and never will it dim."

"I like to consider myself a rare breed. I'm very spontaneous and random… I'm determined and goal oriented. My destiny is laid on a solid gold brick pathway...."

And you thought Big Bird was in trouble.

Watch out for Elmo.

"Sesame Street has asked President Obama's campaign to take down its latest attack ad against Mitt Romney..."

"... which features footage of Big Bird.

"

Oh, no! Obama can't catch a break. Romney attacked Big Bird, and then Big Bird attacked Obama.

Obama makes an O.J. Simpson joke and he can't get the name of the SUV right.

"Elmo has been seen in a white Suburban!"

He turned the Ford into a Chevy. Maybe that was intentional, since he saved General Motors and not Ford.

Or did he pick Suburban because he hates suburbia? Stanley Kurtz has written a whole book on that subject, which he summarizes here. Excerpt:

The centerpiece of the Obama administration’s anti-suburban plans is a little-known and seemingly modest program called the Sustainable Communities Initiative. The “regional planning grants” funded under this initiative — many of them in battleground states like Florida, Virginia, and Ohio — are set to recommend redistributive policies, as well as transportation and development plans, designed to undercut America’s suburbs. Few have noticed this because the program’s goals are muffled in the impenetrable jargon of “sustainability,” while its recommendations are to be unveiled only in a possible second Obama term.

But jokes about "Sesame Street" characters are so much more fun to play around with right now... la la la... as we run up to the election.

Obama’s former community-organizing mentors and colleagues want the administration to condition future federal aid on state adherence to the recommendations served up by these anti-suburban planning commissions. That would quickly turn an apparently modest set of regional-planning grants into a lever for sweeping social change.

Big Bird... tee hee... Elmo... ha ha... woman with a slashed throat... blood everywhere....

"Mr. Wizard's a Dick."

Here's an interview with the compilers of "Mr. Wizard's a Dick," Mike Schuster and Diane Bullock:

This idea was about 25 years in the making. We both watched the show as kids, but I was a bit more obsessed. I would watch it religiously before school and had running jokes with my parents about how casually cruel and condescending Mr. Wizard could be to the kids.

About a year ago, Diane and I started re-watching the old episodes and would die laughing at some of the things he would say and do... be it a snarky tone or how he'd just cut off a kid's answer even if they were on the right track....

"TV can boost self-esteem of white boys... Self-esteem of white girls, black kids decreases with TV consumption."

Put that on your list of things a study said.

With the definition of self-esteem being an overall feeling of self-worth, Harrison told CNN, kids were asked reverse-coded questions such as, "Are there a lot of things about yourself you would like to change?"

Are you sure you didn't reverse-code some other character quality?

For white boys, "regardless of what show you're watching ... things in life are pretty good for you," [Nicole] Martins, an assistant professor of telecommunications at Indiana University Bloomington, said in a statement. "(White males) tend to be in positions of power; you have prestigious occupations, high education, glamorous houses, a beautiful wife, with very little portrayals of how hard you worked to get there."

And this unrealistic complacency benefits the white males, because... ? Because everything benefits white males?

MTP discussion on Obama's SSM evolution... beginning with an SNL sketch.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

ADDED: And here's the Newsweek cover:



"The First Gay President"... like Clinton was "the first black President."

AND: That cover... what does it remind me of....



Remember the old Tinky-Winky-Is-Gay controversy? That's the kind of thing that makes me wish I started blogging earlier:

Tinky Winky started a still hinted-at controversy in 1999 because of his carrying a bag that looks much like a woman's handbag (although he was first "outed" by the academic and cultural critic Andy Medhurst in a letter of July 1997 to The Face). He aroused the interest of Jerry Falwell in 1999 when Falwell alleged that the character was a "gay role model". Falwell issued an attack in his National Liberty Journal, citing a Washington Post "In/Out" column which stated that lesbian comedian Ellen DeGeneres was "out" as the chief national gay representative, while trendy Tinky Winky was "in." He warned parents that Tinky Winky could be a covert homosexual symbol, because "he is purple, the gay pride colour, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle: the gay pride symbol."

The BBC, who co-produced the programme, made an official response, "Tinky Winky is simply a sweet, technological baby with a magic bag." Ken Viselman of Itsy-Bitsy Entertainment, who distributed the show in the USA, commented, "He's not gay. He's not straight. He's just a character in a children's series.

If Obama loses he will have something which, if he wins, he will lose and never be able to recover.

An observation from a discussion, here at Meadhouse, about what the Obamas, Michelle and Barack, will do after he is out of office. What set off the discussion was this news story about Michelle Obama going on the TV show "Top Chef" and judging a competition about school lunches. She'll be around forever — won't she? — doing things about kids and health and food. Women's TV. Books for women. The traditional woman gig. (It's for liberals too.)

And Barack? He'll be fine. He'll do analysis. Distanced observation. Comfort and critique. I say. Meade says: "Not if he loses." At which point I said what I've got quoted there in the post title. You see what it is, of course.

If he loses,  he can run for President again. He was the first black President, and now he can be the second 2-non-consecutive-terms President, after Grover Cleveland. I picture him going on "Sesame Street," talking to Grover about Grover Cleveland and teaching the kids in TV about the constitutional law of presidential term limits and about how sometimes you get knocked down, but you get back up.