Kevin Clash, the puppeteer behind “Sesame Street’s” Elmo since the early ’80s, has resigned from the show after a second man filed a lawsuit Tuesday, accusing him of a sexual relationship with an underage male and seeking $5 million in damages.
News of the second allegation comes shortly after the first man — who had recanted his allegation that he was a minor when he first had sex with Clash — let it be known Monday that he wanted to recant his recantation and return a $125,000 settlement.
“I am resigning from Sesame Workshop with a very heavy heart,” Clash said Tuesday in a statement.
“I have loved every day of my 28 years working for this exceptional organization,” he continued. “Personal matters have diverted attention away from the important work ‘Sesame Street’ is doing and I cannot allow it to go on any longer. I am deeply sorry to be leaving and am looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately.”
Sesame Workshop said Tuesday in a statement: “None of us [at Sesame Workshop], especially Kevin, want anything to divert our attention from our focus on serving as a leading educational organization. . . . Unfortunately, the controversy surrounding Kevin’s personal life has become a distraction that none of us want, and he has concluded that he can no longer be effective in his job. . . .This is a sad day for ‘Sesame Street.’ ”
This will probably be my least favorite story to report of the day, as I had previously been hopeful that these allegations against Clash were false and that Elmo would survive unscathed from such troubling controversy.
There are a number of reasons that this is especially troubling, apart from the fact that it is attached to the name of Sesame Street which I think may be one of the greatest entities on the planet, and that is that it involves a trusted individual who works with children, homosexuality, and pedophilia.
The gay community has worked for years to educate people that they do not support, nor are connected, to pedophilia, and incidents like this only do damage to their ability to define themselves as moral upstanding people who simply love differently than their straight friends, family, and co-workers.
There will of course be those, many speaking from the pulpit, who will use this incident as proof of the deviance of the homosexual "lifestyle," but of course that is no more fair than claiming that ALL Catholic priests are pedophiles, all politicians are crooks, or that all generals are philanderers.
It is of course simply a very sad story of the end of a career that has inspired, and entertained, children all over the world.
