{"id":4294,"date":"2018-09-23T03:21:21","date_gmt":"2018-09-23T10:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=4294"},"modified":"2018-09-23T03:21:21","modified_gmt":"2018-09-23T10:21:21","slug":"all-about-ernie-and-bert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/09\/23\/all-about-ernie-and-bert\/","title":{"rendered":"All About Ernie and Bert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019d say&nbsp;<strong><em>Sesame Street<\/em><\/strong>&nbsp;qualifies as an American treasure.&nbsp; And I\u2019d place&nbsp;<strong>Ernie&nbsp;<\/strong>and&nbsp;<strong>Bert&nbsp;<\/strong>near the top of the list of indelible inhabitants.&nbsp; Every once in a while, people wonder whether the \u201croommates\u201d are gay or straight.&nbsp; Former&nbsp;<em>SS<\/em>&nbsp;writer&nbsp;<strong>Mark Saltzman&nbsp;<\/strong>added fuel to the fire.&nbsp; \u201cI always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were gay.&nbsp; I didn\u2019t have any other way to contextualize them.\u201d&nbsp; It should be noted that the characters were actually created in the original&nbsp;<em>Sesame Street<\/em>&nbsp;pilot in 1969; Saltzman didn\u2019t start writing for the show until 1984.&nbsp;&nbsp;<em>The Sesame Workshop&nbsp;<\/em>issued a statement of their own.&nbsp; \u201c<em>Sesame Street&nbsp;<\/em>has always stood for inclusion and acceptance.&nbsp; It\u2019s a place where people of all cultures and backgrounds are welcome.&nbsp; Bert and Ernie were created to be best friends, and to teach young children that people can get along with those who are very different from themselves.&nbsp; They also added \u201cthey remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation\u201d.&nbsp; Tell that to&nbsp;<strong>Miss Piggy<\/strong>, who constantly lusts after an ambivalent amphibian\u2026<strong>Kermit<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019d say&nbsp;Sesame Street&nbsp;qualifies as an American treasure.&nbsp; And I\u2019d place&nbsp;Ernie&nbsp;and&nbsp;Bert&nbsp;near the top of the list of indelible inhabitants.&nbsp; Every once in a while, people wonder whether the \u201croommates\u201d are gay or straight.&nbsp; Former&nbsp;SS&nbsp;writer&nbsp;Mark Saltzman&nbsp;added fuel to the fire.&nbsp; \u201cI always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4294"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4295,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4294\/revisions\/4295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}