Fox's 'surreal' attack on The Muppets: The jokes

Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, and the rest of the Muppet gang may seem like innocent puppets, but according to one Fox Business Network segment, they're actually part of a liberal media plot to "brainwash your kids against capitalism." In the new Muppets movie, the villain is an evil oil baron — named, rather obviously, Tex Richman — who plans to tear down the Muppets' theater to drill for oil. Once again, Fox Business bemoaned on Dec. 2, Hollywood is "depicting a successful businessman as evil" and vilifying the oil industry. "It's amazing how far the Left will go just to stop — to manipulate your kids," guest Dan Gainor of the Media Research Center said. (Watch a clip here.) These "surreal" charges against Kermit and friends have some commentators cracking wise. Here, a sampling:

Tip of the iceberg

The anti-corporate message isn't the only troubling thing in this film, says Alexandra Petri in The Washington Post. "There is a pig engaging in an interspecies relationship with a frog. This is literally the slippery slope that sprang into people's minds when they voted yes on Prop 8."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Now that you mention it

While they're at it, maybe the Right ought to investigate "this whole 'rainbow connection'" thing, too, tweets Slate's Dahlia Lithwick.

No joke

"Don't laugh, citizens," says Jeff Labrecque at Entertainment Weekly. The Muppets is hardly the first offender. "Films like Happy Feet, It's a Wonderful Life, and Bambi are a Trojan horse of anti-American propaganda most 6-year-olds are not sophisticated enough to decipher. Today, they're singing 'Life's a Happy Song.' Tomorrow, they're getting pepper-sprayed by a patriot."

About time

"I can't tell you how glad I am that someone has finally had the balls to put a stop to this calcified 'let's put on a show to save something precious from the nasty job creator' plot nonsense," says Andrew Leonard at Salon. "It may be one of Hollywood's oldest tropes, but that doesn't make it right."

All is revealed

"And all this time, everyone thought Kermit was just a peace-loving frog who just wants to sing about rainbows!" says Aida Ekberg at Gather. "Maybe [his] nemesis in the latest Muppet movie should have been a green, greed-loving fellow named Gordon Gecko."

A whole new light

I didn't watch 1984's The Muppets Take Manhattan, says Tim Dowling at Britain's Guardian. But thanks to Fox's enlightenment, I'm now sure it's about "the Muppets joining some sort of terrorist network, which may sound funny to certain left-wing intellectual freedom-haters, but I think it's just sick."