Sesame Street in Pakistan

Hot Air ^ | 9 | Jazz Shaw

[mandaladon]

It’s a good thing we’re flush with money, highly influential and well respected around the world. Otherwise, this plan might not seem like such a spectacularly fabulous idea.

The United States is funding a Pakistani remake of the popular TV children’s show Sesame Street.

In a new effort to win hearts and minds in Pakistan, USAID – the development arm of the US government – is donating $20m (£12m) to the country to create a local Urdu version of the show…

The remake will star a puppet called Rani, the six-year-old daughter of a peasant farmer, with pigtails and a school uniform, according to Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

No word on whether or not the female child puppet will be wearing traditional garb, or how much of it, but we do know that they won’t be including Count Von Count in the cast. I’m guessing that’s because… he’s a vampire? Further, the show’s creators have stated that they’re going to be avoiding questions of religion, so I don’t know how much westernization might be taking hold from this.

So should we be dumping money into a project like this right on the heels of the bruising budget battle which just concluded? James Joyner notes that it’s not really a significant chunk of change and he might get behind the idea.

Is this an incredibly brazen waste of money? Or a drop in the bucket well spent? The second, quite likely…

I haven’t the foggiest whether a Pakistani Sesame Street will succeed in transforming the culture on matters of gender equality or literacy. But, given that we’re pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the region, I’m willing to risk $20 million to find out.

[grey_whiskers]

That entire post was projection on your part, Hetty.

Lurker has repeatedly asked you to find Constitutional authorization to spend taxpayer money on a kid's show in a foreign country halfway across the world.

The problem is that many of the -stans are seriously screwed up beyond the point of Western comprehension: see for example Asherah celebrations where people whip and cut themselves bloody (even the children's scalps are sliced), or the long history of homosexual pedophilia (bacha bazi).

NO cheers, unfortunately.

[JerseyHighlander]

We spend over $1M/day just in two tribal areas of Pakistan with the military drones and intelligence on the ground.

The US needs to do as much propaganda to affect the outlook of future Pakistanis by brainwashing them today before they are brainwashed later on in the madrassas and Pakistan’s popular culture.