Woodstock, Stonewall, Chappaquiddick. Monty Python, President Nixon, Golda Meir. "Midnight Cowboy," "The Brady Bunch." The moon landing. No matter how you measure it, 1969 was an extraordinary year. The sun rose and set on the Manson murders and the exposure of My Lai, but also over "Abbey Road" and John and Yoko's famous "bed-ins."
More important, perhaps even most important, it was the year of "Sesame Street."
There is no medium more powerful or ubiquitous as television and there is no television show more iconic or revolutionary than "Sesame Street."
Born of educational research, endless focus groups and the desire of creators Joan Ganz Cooney and Jim Henson to raise all boats, "Sesame Street" turned the idea of TV as the one-eyed baby sitter on its head: If children are staring at the tube for hours at a time, why not try to teach them something?
And not just numbers and letters and the benefits of sharing. Racially, economically and generationally diverse before "diversity" was cool, "Sesame Street" spoke to children and families who were not part of the white middle class that dominated the medium, while broadening the horizons of those who were. Even the music broke all conventions.
All of which makes tonight's "Families Stand Together: Feeling Secure in Tough Times" all the more poignant. Forty years after "Sesame Street" lit up the children's branch of social revolution, it's now seeking to provide stability in the midst of economic collapse.
Families in flux
Hosted by Al Roker and his wife, journalist Deborah Roberts, the one-hour prime-time "Sesame Street" special looks at how different families are coping with layoffs and other budgetary downturns. There's a community market being held on Sesame Street where various families are selling things to earn a little extra money. Good thing too, because even some of the locals are facing hard times -- superhero Grover is looking for a job and the irrepressible-bordering-on-manic Elmo learns that his mother has been laid off, which can be kind of scary.
As they move from table to table and story to story, Roker and Roberts ask how each family is coping and celebrate their ability to put togetherness before material things. Even so, the series of mini-docs will make an adult viewer swallow hard more than once. Jobs have been lost, and homes, families that were planned on the foundation of a solid-seeming career now teeter, mothers wipe away tears and proud parents find themselves having to ask for help -- financial, psychological -- from family and local agencies.
