(Reuters/Sesame Workshop; from here)

No nation with a shred of decency would allow so many of its children to live in poverty such that this story could be anything other than parody (it’s not):

A new poverty-stricken Muppet will highlight the issue of hunger struggles on an episode of “Sesame Street”, the show said in a statement on Tuesday.

Pink-faced Muppet Lily, whose family deals with food insecurity, will join Big Bird, Elmo and other favorites on a one-hour prime-time special featuring country star Brad Paisley and his wife Kimberly Williams Paisley called “Growing Hope Against Hunger,” to air Oct 9.

The new Muppet will bring awareness to the ongoing hunger struggles that families face in the United States, the show said.

“Food insecurity is a growing and difficult issue for adults to discuss, much less children,” the Paisleys said in a statement….

Recent U.S. Department of Agriculture data estimates that 17 million American children have limited or uncertain access to food. And 9.6 million of these children are under the age of 6, which prompted Sesame Workshop, the non-profit organization behind “Sesame Street,” to launch a “Food For Thought: Eating Well on a Budget” initiative.

That’s more than one out of five children.

As a blogger, I’m supposed to write something either cutting or profound, but what does one write when a popular children’s show has to address childhood hunger because so many children are hungry? All I can do is turn to a case where a small inequity was eliminated:

You are here tonight to demand that Memphis do something about the conditions that our brothers face, as they work day in and day out for the well-being of the total community. You are here to demand that Memphis will see the poor.

…I will hear America through her historians years and years to come saying, “We built gigantic buildings to kiss the sky. We build gargantuan bridges to span the seas. Through our spaceships we were able to carve highways through the stratosphere. Through our airplanes we were able to dwarf distance and place time in chains. Through our submarines we were able to penetrate oceanic depths.”

But it seems that I can hear the God of the universe saying, “even though you’ve done all of that, I was hungry and you fed me not. I was naked and ye clothed me not. The children of my sons and daughters were in need of economic security, and you didn’t provide for them. So you cannot enter the kingdom of greatness.” This may well be the indictment on America that says in Memphis to the mayor, to the power structure, “If you do it unto the least of these my brethren, you do it unto me.”

Great nations do not let one of five children want for food. Just peoples do not either.