It's not April 1...

...so I can only assume this is true. The Cookie Monster is going healthy. Two serious comments, and then, well, the joke this one really deserves.

First, just yesterday I noted efforts at General Motors to encourage employees to shape up, on the theory that this would reduce the company's health insurance expenditures. That program caught my eye because it raised the possibility that the private sector would have better incentives, and thus design more productive programs, to combat the health woes that are plaguing America. This Sesame Street program strikes me as what we would end up with otherwise. (Because let's face it -- PBS is a government program, pledge drives and "underwriters" notwithstanding.) Meanwhile, as experts bemoan America's sedentary lifestyle, and especially the degree to which our youngsters now just sit around watching TV, one can't help but note a certain irony here. And will it even reach a meaningful number of kids? Worth asking because...

Second, Sesame Street's new healthy living message will be falling on a declining audience. Under pressure from a terrifying proliferation of cable children's programming (some of which, incidentally, may be pedagogically sounder than Sesame Street), the PBS program's audience has been drifting away for years. So, best efforts to the contrary, you have to wonder what difference it will make.

And now, although the song has probably already been written, I present my Cranky Lyrics to "A Cookie Is A Sometimes Food" (which I've elected to sing to the tune of the Gilligan's Island theme song):

A cookie is a sometimes food,
'Cause it will make you fat;
So if you want to look real good,
You should remember that, you should remember that.

The calories will do you in
The carbs will stretch your waist;
So if you want to be real thin,
You'd better stick to paste, you'd better stick to paste.

With exercise you might get fit
It's a method that is tried;
Still, lest our ratings take a hit,
Watch PBS inside, watch PBS inside.