He's just a puppet. . .

. . .for cryin' out loud! Yet, there's apparently a reasonably sizeable constituency that is convinced he's contributing to the epidemic of obesity among children with his gluttonous scarfing of cookies.

Lamentably, the Cookie Monster is being reined in and will be the subject of a moderation intervention at the hands of some of his fellow castmates on Sesame Street, wherein he will be forced to confront his dietary indiscretion, and taught that cookies are, after all, a "sometimes food."

Far be it from me to get on a soapbox about this. I do happen to agree that cookies are a "sometimes food," and that people ought to eat them more slowly and in smaller quantities than the Cookie Monster generally does. And, while I don't have kids, I do know that if I were to walk into a room and see one of my nieces or nephew eating Chips Ahoy at a rate that sent them flying hither and yon in a cloud of crumbs, I'd have to shake my head and wonder if the Cookie Monster might have planted a seed.

But, you don't even see the fattest of kids doing that. Even the most corpulent tyke will tend to be rather leisurely in his consumption of cookies, preferring to savor them one -- maybe two at a time, with some chocolate fudge cake icing spread between to make a sandwich. So, I highly doubt that the furry blue creature I grew up with had anything at all to do with the explosion in the number of elephantine progeny we see today.

And, it occurs to me that if I were to walk into a room and see my nephew mincing about, or any of my nieces wearing men's Levis and plaid flannel shirts with the sleeves cut off, sporting mullets, playing acoustic guitars and singing in three-pack-a-day voices about road trips and pool halls, I don't think I'd wheel around toward the television set and say, "Damn you, Spongebob. You did this."