New York, NY — The Sesame Workshop, formerly known as the Children’s Television Workshop, announced that its flagship program Sesame Street would feature its first transgender character for the 2019 season.
The character, who only has a project name of “Brunny” at the time of this writing, will join Elmo and the rest of the Sesame Street characters to discuss important issues of the day, according to staff writers.
“Sesame Street has a long commitment to multiculturalism and diversity,” said Sesame Workshop Director of Communications Bethany Millbright reading from a prepared statement. “So as you might imagine, adding a transgender character to our huge cast of diverse Muppets was a no-brainer. We understand that there will be some who don’t understand this addition, but Sesame Street has long been a vanguard of children’s television, and we believe history is on our side.”
According to a draft sketch of the new and arguably controversial character, Brunny will be a bunny-like animal who spent its formative years being homeless, but through the help of others, managed to get back on track. Brunny will be significant and second only in size to Big Bird.
The announcement immediately drew fire from conservative congressional members who see this as another attempt by the media to indoctrinate children.
“It just defies common sense,” said Missouri Republican Vicky Hartzler, who represents the State’s 4th District and has proposed several anti-LGBT laws. “It’s like allowing a 3-year-old to drive a car. If we allow a transgender puppet to be in front of our children every day, they’re going to begin to think that’s normal. And we all know this is a part of the gay agenda. You know how this falls into place. If you care about somebody and you have a committed relationship, why not allow one man and two women, or three women to marry? Why not allow an uncle to marry his niece? Why not allow a 50-year-old man to marry a 12-year-old girl if they love each other and they’re committed? And allowing this thing onto Sesame Street is just a way of creeping this agenda into the commonplace.”
Representative Hartzler went on to say that she would be introducing a bill to not only cut Sesame Workshop’s funding to zero, but she was also going to include wording to pull the programming off the air given this latest development.
