old and my favorite

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (c.c.'d the Children's Television Workshop)

To my life-long friends at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting,

I was born in 1978. As a result, I was among your prime demographic during what many consider to have been the golden age of children's television. In those long gone days of yore, us children were treated to hours upon hours of the highest quality entertainment, and the best of it came directly from your organization. I'm talking about Reading Rainbow, 3-2-1- Contact, Square-One, Mr.. Roger's Neighborhood, and, the Zeus of your Olympian Pantheon of childhood delight, Sesame Street. As a young lad, I squealed with boundless joy every time I saw my favorite characters parade across the screen. Not only were there frequent visits by the likes of C-3PO and R-2-D-2, but the old standbys such as Kermit the Frog (in a cross-over achievement remarkable for an artist of his stature, especially in those close-minded times), the terrifying Count, Forgetful Jones, Oscar the Grouch and his pall Slimy, The as-then invisible Mr. Snuffaluffagus (a Greek Mastodon? Genius!), and the late Mr. Hooper. Notice I have not included the lamentable and insufferable "Elmo", who came upon the scene like a festering boil, thankfully long after I had stopped watching.
The best, most loveable, and perhaps most misunderstood of your wonderful cast of characters was indubitably the obviously bulimic Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster represented to me the chaotic expulsiveness that came to dominate my early childhood; the snowball fights, the school bus riots, the terrorizing of countless babysitters. The way he would pour cookies into his mouth with reckless abandon, not even caring that most, if not all of them, fell right back out, all the while groaning his idiosyncratic "ummmmnumnumnummm" with almost orgasmic intensity, came to almost completely define my preadolescent worldview.
But now, this morning, I awoke to find that the most basic and totemic expression of my childhood glee has been, for lack of a better word, castrated by mindless pandering to the P.C. lobby. Cookie Monster has given up cookies. Take a second, and read that again. Cookie Monster has given up Cookies. WHAT THE FUCK. He now will eat vegetables, and even fruit.
I'm not even going to get into the fact that he is, in fact, a MONSTER, and therefore can eat whatever he damn well pleases. This is more a matter of principle. I find it repellent and regrettable that an institution as revered and important as CPB and PBS would bend to kiss the collective ass of all the miserable do-gooders out there that are afraid to indulge in a cookie binge from time to time. Have you no backbone, no integrity?
Unfortunately, at this time, I am disgusted beyond the capacity for rational thought, and so I will say no more. Let me just finish by saying that you have destroyed my childhood. You motherfuckers.

Sean Michael Conklin
Doctor of Awesomness.