Hard truths about cookies
Slate's Troy Patterson writes (short, as Troy Patterson does) about Cookie Monster in the site's Browbeat blog, and he quotes a 1972 New Yorker article by Renata Adler. I like the quote, but it hints at more:
Cookie is a fanatic, undeviating in the quality of his obsession. He eats things. Many lessons on Sesame Street are terminated when something eats them. But Cookie, who has of late been eating mainly cookies, is a junkie. "To me, your nose is a cookie," he once said to another Muppet in a desperate moment. When cookies arrive, he tends to eat the entire shipment, but he is moved to empathy at the sight of a human being temporarily deprived of a cookie.
And there is more. The article surfaces the full quote. And lessons.
"Our next contestant," says the Muppet master of ceremonies in a little parody of the quiz show Concentration, "is a monster from Sesame Street." The contestant is the Cookie Monster, known to some as Monster, to some as Cookie, and to fathers of the world outside, at bedtime, as a difficult creature to imitate the voice of. Cookie is a fanatic, undeviating in the quality of his obsession. He eats things. Many lessons on Sesame Street are terminated when something eats them. But Cookie, who has of late been eating mainly cookies, is a junkie. "To me, your nose is a cookie," he once said to another Muppet in a desperate moment. He sees cookies in all things circular: a rubber-tire swing, or a bicycle wheel. Geometric forms are among the program's many subjects. When cookies arrive, he tends to eat the entire shipment, but he is moved to empathy at the sight of a human being temporarily deprived of a cookie. "How sad," he says. "You taking it so well." He has never quite correctly learned the language. Other characters on Sesame Street use dialect, make grammatical errors, even speak in Spanish. The black expression "Give me some skin" has now become so common among characters asking for a handshake that Muppets say "Give me some fur." On the quiz show, Cookie won by losing. There four numbers on the wall, concealing prizes. As in Concentration, the object was to name the numbers that concealed matching prizes. Cookie failed to match anything. He lost a jet place and won a consolation cookie. Sesame Street does not overvalue competition.
To lose… but to get a cookie. I realized the other day I hadn't had a cookie in my cupboards in months, and I wondered what that meant.
