Culture Sesame Street writer confirms Bert and Ernie are Gay - Bertstrips officially canon now

https://mashable.com/article/sesame-street-bert-ernie-gay/?europe=true

The queer fan community have long known that Bert and Ernie were gay Muppets. It's just taken a little bit longer for the rest of the world to catch up.

In an interview with Queerty, one of Sesame Street's original writers, Mark Saltzman, finally confirmed the rumors. According to Saltzman, Bert and Ernie aren't just gay. He thinks of them as a "loving couple."

"I remember one time that a column from The San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked 'are Bert & Ernie lovers?'" Saltzman told Queerty. "And that got passed around, and everyone had their chuckle and went back to it. And I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them. The other thing was, more than one person referred to Arnie [Saltzman's partner at the time] & I as “Bert & Ernie.”

Of course Bert and Ernie are gay. No one wants to hang around their roommate that much, regardless of how good they are at chess. How could Ernie put up with Bert's pigeons if he didn't love him in that way?

Saltzman explained how his own same-sex relationship became a model for Bert & Ernie — even if the rest of the cast wasn't aware of the underlying queer dynamics:

"And Arnie as a film editor—if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple. I wrote sketches … Arnie’s OCD would create friction with how chaotic I was. And that’s the Bert & Ernie dynamic," Satlzman said.

Justice, served. Twitter seems to think so too:


Deborah Temkin, Ph.D

✔@DrDebTemkin


The fact that it’s confirmed that Bert and Ernie are in fact based on a real life couple just makes me smile from ear to ear https://www.queerty.com/exclusive-bert-ernie-couple-finally-answer-20180916 … #lgbtq


Klaudia Amenábar // let a blind actress play Toph@kaludiasays


Bert and Ernie were just confirmed gay and Snuffy was a closeted depressed gay how was this not the #1 trending news story today this is the most important cultural event of our time



Jesse Kelly®

✔@JesseKellyDC


Bert is the only gay man in history with bad eyebrows.
However, I have more questions for Bert and Ernie: Are they still monogamous after all these years? Do they have to attend couple's therapy to manage Bert's anal retentiveness? Did any of them ever have a thing with Big Bird?

Regardless of their answers, we should all be so happy for their love.

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Naaaah these gifs are still funny to me.

bless Frank Oz though, for being civilized and kind through and through.

I really don't understand adults who need innocent child cartoons/shows to validate their sexuality. I've never fucking met a single child (though I've met plenty of confused teens) that gave a shit about their sexuality. At most they just think it's gross for a while because they're kids.
 
Anyone with half a brain can see that the relationship dynamic of Bert and Ernie closely resembles the classic two-man comedy teams such as Laurel & Hardy and Abbott & Costello, where one person is the comic relief and the other is the...no pun intended...straight man. Given the time period that both Jim Henson and Frank Oz grew up in, it wouldn't be a stretch to think they were referencing that comedy style when creating the characters. They were created to advocate learning through humor, not to push any sort of social agenda.
 
Naaaah these gifs are still funny to me.

bless Frank Oz though, for being civilized and kind through and through.

I really don't understand adults who need innocent child cartoons/shows to validate their sexuality. I've never fucking met a single child (though I've met plenty of confused teens) that gave a shit about their sexuality. At most they just think it's gross for a while because they're kids.
I wish they understood that.
 
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In the midst of everything else that's happening right now, I really did not expect to see a sudden, violent slapfight break out over fucking gay Muppets. I'm also going to nominate "They remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation" for random.txt because what the Hell is even happening.
 
One thing I've learned about the LGBTumblr crowd is that once they are given their "representation", they swoop in and claim the children's work in question. "This is ours now, and we want more." Adults, not kids. And given that the content is sexua, "more" is not a good word to see.

Parents, of course, want to protect our kids from those weirdos who are showing an uncomfortable interest in sexuality/practices/genitalia in a context of children, so we just pull them out of the fandom and try to find them something else safe to watch, if anything.

(Powerlevel: I've recently had to do this with Voltron. I've had to do it with My Little Pony. I'm not even letting my kids near Frozen. And I've been twitchy about Sesame Street since the Elmo fiasco.)

While LGBTumblrinas are always outspoken about how much they love a work, it's the parents who spend the money on toys and merch. I suspect SW knows which side their bread's buttered on.

(ETA: Removed content about taxpayer funding. @CWCissey kindly reminded me that the times, they are a-changin'.)
 
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Because people need something to relate to apparently.
How many of these people are you willing to bet that can take a joke? Here’s the answer: no one.

People after Gamergate all of a sudden started to take offense about anything that’s a bit controversial and would only prefer to talk about in a positive way. A great example is Harriet The Spy, murder jokes were everywhere in that movie. If someone like those people would watch it, they would get offended I guarantee it.
 
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The way Frank Oz conducted himself with class, poise, and dignity reminds me of @GethN7 's posting style: willing to acknowledge other points of view and respectfully disagreeing as necessary even while others resort to personal attacks and such. Semper Fi, Frank. :winner: Sad that his current naysayers can't return the same civility he's shown them.
Something something sea lioning, concern trolling, tone policing, something something.
 
As a straight man who is constantly reminded how toxic my identity is because I won't express my feelings through any means other than aggression and violence, it warms my heart to see those same accusers declare that any friendly interaction between males must mean they're gay because they're the ones who won't accept the idea of straight men showing affection to each other in the first place.
 
I mean, while I don't disagree with the conceit that this whole thing is silly, homosexuality doesn't JUST mean sex, contrary to what /pol/ would have you believe. When you see a straight couple in this sort of thing do you go "UGH WHY ARE THEY PUTTING A MAN AND A WOMAN FUCKING IN A CHILDREN'S PROGRAM"?

There's plenty to get mad at here without accusing the other side of being stealth-pedophiles.
 
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