NEW YORK. – In yet another troubling sign of the flailing economy, iconic television children’s show Sesame Street has announced layoffs, which the show’s producers say will affect 20% of its staff.

However, the cuts don’t stop there.

“We didn’t feel like it would be right to ask only our staff to participate in our recovery, so these cuts will also affect the letters ‘Q,’ ‘X,’ ‘Z’ and ‘K,’” said Pandy Simpleflower, a spokesperson with Sesame Workshop, the non-profit producer of the show. “We wanted to target roughly 20% of the alphabet as well. Since five letters would have put us just over, we decided to cut four of them, plus the semicolon, which no one under the age of 50 knows how to use properly anyway, if they’re even aware it exists.”

Simpleflower said the four letters were drawn from the least-used members of the alphabet. “We felt it only right that those that were least productive should be the first ones to go,” she added.

Big Bird - and the letter "H" - were both unaffected by the layoffs.

One of the easiest decisions, she said, was the elimination of the letter ‘Q.’ “99% of the time, that letter required its own dedicated support personnel – namely, the letter ‘U.’ We just can’t support that level of inefficiency in today’s economy.”

Early-childhood education experts generally praised the actions.

“Sesame Street was in a tough spot, and they had to make cuts,” said Dr. Frontloaded Pederast. “You never like to lose accessories, but I’m glad to see that they targeted letters that few, if any children – and many adults – would ever have a use for. The semicolon, while fun to draw, probably should have been eliminated decades ago.”

The letters’ absence will be felt more by some words than others, said Pederast, and kids who rely on Sesame Street in their efforts to gain literacy will be running into some classic words with new twists. As examples, he cited the substitution of the word “cwicly” for “quickly” and “cic” for “kick.”

Pederast was unsure how words such as “zip” would be written, while Simpleflower would only say that Sesame Street had devised a “fun, uplifting way” that would “accommodate all learning styles, from the gifted to the profoundly stupid.” However, she refused to offer further details, deferring to a rollout of an entire new phonics system, which will be introduced on the show in coming weeks.

“Ultimately, none of this matters,” noted Pederast. “The only time today’s youth ever use the alphabet is when texting, and everything is abbreviated in those circumstances. Letters really become secondary to emoticons and the general absurdity of pointless communication.”

Pederast envisions a future alphabet consisting only of the vowels plus the consonants S, R, L and C. “A nine-letter alphabet is in our future,” he said. “The only question is when.”

Originally posted 2009-03-16 17:59:56. Republished by Blog Post Promoter