Ah now that you mention the tuxedos and lounge singer yes I have vague memories of her… but they did fight over Gadget a few times too.
The gopher cartoons were my favorites. I loved them, they amused me to no end. And it never once occured to me that they could be gay…thanx for destroying my innocence. 
All right- now let’s talk about Bert and Ernie…
You leave Bert and Ernie alone!
Poor Bert…never harmed a soul. Now he’s gone, gone, gone…cries for Bert
Bert’s gone? What? When did that happen? Bert is cool!
I liked those too. I also liked Tailspin and Duck Tales.
**
“Two Chips and a Miss” (1952). The lounge singer’s name was Clarice.
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“A Ham in a Role”…“A Bone for a Bone”…“I Gopher You”…“Lumber Jerks”…
I’d say those titles pretty much say it all.
Topaz, apparently someone got it in their head that Bert and Ernie were gay life partners, and a bad role model for children. So one of them had to go. Because Ernie was more popular, Bert got the boot.
Pepper, I’d heard a couple years ago that the makers of Sesame Street were writing the shows so that Bert and Ernie * did * appear gay … you know, to show kids that homosexuality is okay and everything.
- Did that happen, and then CTW cave to pressure from the right-wing and thus kill off Bert?
** OR **
- Was the whole “Bert & Ernie are gay” debacle just in someone’s imagination, and CTW killed off Bert to stop the rumors once and for all?
A clue to all this might be … how was Ernie behaving at the funeral?
No, no, no…
FALSE - Sesame Street muppets Bert and Ernie are live-in lovers, and they’re about to get married.
FALSE - News of Ernie’s death will be reported on an upcoming episode of Sesame Street.
The links have CTW’s official statements on each matter.
Damn, forgot to put in my two cents about the gophers:
I don’t think they’re gay. They’re just British. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference.
(hehehe…)
I think thats a shame they did that to Bert… but I can see how he would be the less popular one… I mean Ernie did have the singing solo in the tub… but Bert is still in the movies I’ve seen though (ie Elmo in Grouchland and Elmopalooza) which is why that came as a surprise to me… I haven’t watched Sesame Street in ages… (especially not the new version… that would just be too weird)
Bert and Ernie, Mac 'n Tosh… shall we discuss the Bananas in Pajamas?
i still wanna know if they actually ever got a gerbil up their arse…
With the gophers and the muppets, there was a shadow of a doubt. BiP areobviously…um…“alternative lifestyle”. What about teletubbies?
My question: who cares!!!
As a child I never thought twice about Bert and Ernie. Shows for pre-school age children can be more sexually ambiguous because children don’t make those kinds of distinctions until they’re older. If they are making those distinctions, it’s probably because they are picking up on their parent’s vibes of intolerance and suspicion and construing from there that something must be up, and they will react differently too.
There’s nothing wrong with Bert and Ernie, Chip and Dale, Joey and Chandler, Mac and Tosh, Fraser and Niles, or Tinky-Winky, and until we stop jumping at shadows and sifting through every piece of popular culture for the specter of adult morality or immorality, we are never going to get past this BULLSH*T!!!. This whole obsessive attitude toward sexuality in our culture is borderline and disturbing.
If anything is messing up our kids, it is the weird way adults react to things that should NOT be taken so goldarn seriously! Jeez, people! Grow up! Get a life! Send me to the Pit and take away my Visa card!
I wasn’t advocating going gopher-hunting. I don’t care if they are gay; I was merely wondering if people thought they were.
I was a Sesame Street addict as a child, and I just thought of Bert and Ernie as friends and roommates.
OOOOOH, I love Bananas in Pajamas. I especially like it when the Bananas have to play fix it.
B1 and B2 walking down the stairs.
B1: OH, this stair has a wibbly wobbly.
B2: Do you know what time it is B1?
B1: I think I do B2.
Together: It’s Fix It Time!
They fix the stairs. Hilarity ensues as they find the Teddy’s have a wibbly wobbly on their back table. They keep cutting the legs to make it even until it is basically on the ground. They then cut the legs of the chairs off until they are the right size.
The kicker is one of the chairs still wobbles. They threaten to fix it but the boy Teddy puts one of his sisters homemade biscuits under the leg and says a biscuit will fix it.
Then the narrator comes in and says, “A biscuit will fix a wibbly wobbly anytime.”
That Teddy’s biscuit must have really sucked if one of those bears could sit on the chair and not crush it into a million crumbs. I wouldn’t want to be forced to eat one of those. It would break all of your teeth. It may not be hard like a diamond but it would be twice as dense as a black hole is in theory. Have you seen the Teddy’s? They are all huge. They have some type of pituitary/glandular problem.
HUGS!
Sqrl