Muppets Are Coming For Your Infants

“Two weeks ago, that international cartel for salubrious children’s entertainment [known as Sesame Workshop] introduced ‘Sesame Beginnings,’ a series of half-hour DVD’s aimed at children 6 months to 2 years old. The content of the programs is innocuous and even enjoyable — a rainbow coalition of real and Muppet parents and babies loving on each other… The fact that these DVD’s exist at all, however, has incensed a clan of Boston-area child-health experts… who are determined not to let an absence of conclusive research get in the way of their conviction that television is noxious to developing minds.” Virginia Heffernan thinks all the fuss more than a bit absurd.