The End of the World as We Know It

We refer not to this afternoon's brief Facebook outage, which, to judge from the reactions of our friends and "friends," was a 9/11-level traumatic event, but rather to the banned Katy Perry duet on Sesame Street. The romantic (?) duet between the busty chanteuse and everyone's favorite whatever-the-hell-he-is, Elmo, was pulled from the show after parents complained about Perry's "provocative" (read: cleavage-approximating) outfit.

Now, we admit to being somewhat fuzzy on the details of exactly who Katy Perry is. We know she's a singer, somewhat less famous than Lady Gaga and somewhat more famous (depressingly) than Aimee Mann. We think she's the one who, a few years ago, stirred up the fantasies of arrestedly-developed males with her revelation that she "kissed a girl and she liked it." (Big deal! So have we!) We do, however, feel that people who protested her "racy outfit" need to, well, get a life.

Years ago, the Solipsist performed with a children's theater troupe (see, "The Actor's Nightmare," 10/17/09). One of his fellow cast members was an extremely attractive woman who played "The Sun." At one point in the show, she had to bend over to speak to children in the front row, and she realized that her blouse would fall open slightly, affording the audience a mildly "inappropriate" view. She suggested that it might be better for her simply to kneel down to be closer to the children, but the director nixed that idea. He told her simply to make a bit out of it: to bend over, "realize" that her shirt was slightly open at the top, and modestly reach up and hold the shirt closed. "After all," he explained, "there are fathers in the audience."

Indeed, Sesame Street gets this, as well. In their statement announcing the self-censorship, they explained, "'Sesame Street' has always been written on two levels, for the child and adult." Parents need stuff to look at, too.

And let's face it: How "corrupted" would the child-audience be by this video. Given the show's target demographic, most viewers looking at Perry's bahoogies would be more likely to think about lunch than lust.