Bert, Ernie, And Squirmy

It’s a question I’ve had for decades about Sesame Street’s Bert and Ernie, but have never received a satisfying answer. Why does Bert have one eyebrow and Ernie doesn’t have any?

The mystery and debate of their sexual orientation have been around for at least a couple of decades. I have cartooned on it, but never really pondered it. To me, they’re asexual. Why? Because they’re puppets for a children’s educational program. But, I do enjoy watching conservatives wig out over it.

The issue came back into the mainstream this week when a former writer, Mark Saltzman, for Sesame Street said he wrote Bert and Ernie as a “loving couple,” taking inspiration from his own relationship with his longtime partner. He also said, “I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were gay. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.”

Yikes! or yay!? Some people were celebrating. Others, not so much. This prompted Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street, to quickly knock down the idea stating, “Bert and Ernie are best friends and, being that they are puppets, have no sexual orientation.” I’ll tell you this though; I’ve never taken a bath in front of my best friend. But then again, I’m not a puppet.

The only puppet I can think of with any sort of sex drive is Miss Piggy. She really wants to nail that frog. “Miss Piggy” is also the term Donald Trump has used as a defense against those who have accused him of sexual harassment and advances. He has claimed some of his accusers weren’t attractive enough for him to hit on, which may only be true if they don’t look anything like his daughter. I suppose this makes Trump the second puppet with a sex drive.

With Kavanaugh hearings, accusations that he attempted to rape a girl when he was a teenager and hurricanes in the news this past week, we can’t forget that Donald Trump is Vladimir Putin’s puppet. The New York Times published an excellent article rounding up everything we know so far, which is a lot. It all comes down to Trump being controlled by Putin.

Hillary Clinton warned us during the campaign that Trump was Putin’s puppet. He’s done nothing to prove her wrong and everything to prove her correct. This week, on The Rachel Maddow Show, she predicted that Trump will go on a firing spree after the midterm elections. Trump loves firing people if he can do it when they’re not around. He even said he should have fired James Comey before he won the election, back when he had as much authority to fire the FBI director as I do.

I don’t care if Bert and Ernie are straight or gay. They’ve never sexually assaulted anyone, and they’re not traitors. They’re also much more intelligent than Trump, and they’re inanimate objects.

As for Trump, he is Putin’s puppet, and we all saw his hand up Trump’s ass during the Helsinki Summit.

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