[mitch]

Ummm, this would worry me if I were still a kid.

Apparently all is not peachy on the Sesame Street Block.

Are we trying to make the muppets look like they live on the red light district? Will there finally be a episode where Bert and Ernie acknowledge their love for each other next or what?

I'm just confused, and creeped out.

[tokyojoe]

The HIV muppet is being featured in South Africa where the HIV infection rate is out of control. It is no longer a homosexual or drug user problem but something that is going to kill massive numbers of people in that country. If done right I think it could help explain to these kids what`s going on at a level they understand. However, I doubt you`ll see something like that in the US. The `moral majority` would have a fit.

[hanabi]

Well, I guess they can all breathe their sigh of pathetic relief now. But I hate how they over-reacted to it in the first place. An HIV+ character for a show that airs in an area where one out of nine people are HIV+? Big shocker. (If you had one of those little yawning emoticons, I'd have used it here.)

If the character teaches kids to be more compassionate and accepting towards sick people in a community that is so very far from those U.S. lawmakers, what do they care? Moreover, the muppet is supposed to be a 5-year-old who will be able to give advice to some of those 13 million AIDS orphans for when they, say, cut a finger. I personally don't see what's so controversial about that.

[hanabi]

He's not yawning; he's just sleeping. I had in mind a really big, showy yawn. Well, I suppose it'll have to do.

Gratuitous use of an emoticon:

[befamfivh]

Nothing controversial about an HIV positive muppet in Africa...

The problem US politicians had was with an HIV positive muppet in America. We wouldn't want our kids catching the gay from tv shows supporting their ungodly plague, now would we?

PBS apparently wasn't even considering to port the character to US Sesame St, though.

and, because I can't figure out how to enable html in this post, here's a straight link:
http://www.tvinsite.com/index.asp?layout=story&doc_id=94771&display=breakingNews&