Sesame Street and the Making of Fuzzy Liberalism

Abstract

As the New Deal order crumbled in the 1960s and 1970s and conservatism ascended, what happened to American liberalism? My dissertation finds the answer to that question in an unexpected place: Sesame Street. Created in 1969, Sesame Street became a template for a new liberal politics that maintained a fealty to individualism and opportunity, had a desire to be inclusive and represent a diverse body of Americans, believed in merit and social uplift, and was devoted to New Deal-era ideas about the government’s role in promoting social reform. I call this politics “fuzzy liberalism.” Understanding Sesame Street’s production of fuzzy liberalism contributes to an emerging historiography on post-1960s liberalism. My chapters explore how fuzzy liberalism operated by exploring themes of the urban crisis and revitalization, race and colorblindness, nonprofits and commercialism, family values and feminism, the culture wars and heteronormativity, and public television and privatization. Drawing on archival sources, like production documents and viewer mail, and a close reading of popular culture, my dissertation blends the cultural and the political in innovative ways to argue that we cannot understand the history of U.S. political culture since the 1960s without giving serious scholarly attention to the politics of Sesame Street.