Sesame Street: where stereotyping lives.

Sesame Street isn't just sweetness and sunshine--and I'm not referring to Oscar the Grouch's potential scabies by living in a trash can.

I'm talking about the forgotten muppet: Roosevelt Franklin.

He was before my time. That's where Mental Floss comes in to remind us of shunned muppets of yesteryear, including Roosevelt.

As this photo suggests, the Sesame Street folks didn't waste a dime in his creation. Using grandma's old violet slipper socks and gluing some eyes on him, Roosevelt was created in 1970 to give black children in America something to look up to. What they got to look up was the word stereotype in the dictionary.

Apparently, Roosevelt taught class at a fictional school on the show--a class that just happened to look like detention, where the children never behaved--nor did Roosevelt. He also spoke in scat or read bee-bop poems. He was apparently popular enough that the birthday card about "Rhyme Time" (pictured above) was created.

"Here's an extra smooth birthday poem"? Extra smooth? Really now? The only time the phrase "extra smooth" is ever used is in advertising for menthol cigarettes.

As an added bonus, Mental Floss tells us Roosevelt tended to teach children about what he knew--which included the geography of Africa and how not to drink poison.

Why, yes. Leave it to the black muppet to have had his stomach pumped because he swigged back a bottle of Lysol at some point. Couldn't Big Bird have tried that one instead? Big Bird doesn't seem terribly bright. He looks like the type that would have eaten some alluring paint chips at some point.

So, as a surprise to no one, parents wrote to Sesame Street complaining Roosevelt was a walking stereotype--and he gradually disappeared by 1975. (Or maybe not "walking"--muppets don't have legs, despite what that birthday card shows. Maybe Roosevelt was a gliding stereotype.)

Nowadays we get Elmo, who sounds like he's taking hits off a helium tank. Dogs cock their head sideways whenever they hear him. Ear drums ring after listening to him.

Thanks, Sesame Street. Thanks.