Kermit the frog is no longer Kermit the frog.

Kermit plotting his revenge against Elmo and company.

Steve Whitmire, the voice of Kermit the frog, has been fired, and no one exactly knows why.

Disney, who owns the Muppets, announced in October 2016 that they intended to recast Kermit's voice, but never explained to Whitmire why, or to anyone else for that matter. Whitmire took over the voice of Kermit in 1990 after the Muppets creator--and original Kermit--Jim Henson died.

On his personal blog, Whitmire is taking the whole matter pretty hard.

"I want all of you who love the Muppets to know that I would never consider abandoning Kermit or any of the others because to do so would be to forsake the assignment entrusted to me by Jim Henson, my friend and mentor, but even more, my hero," he wrote.

Oh, boy.

"I just want you all to know that I am sorry if I have disappointed any of you at any point throughout our journey, and to let everyone know that I am devastated to have failed in my duty to my hero," he added.

Someone get this guy a drink...or six...because he's going to need them.

Since Disney is quiet on the matter, I think it's fair to throw wild accusations around and blame Elmo for this. We all know he's power hungry.

Germans are heavily borrowing English words, and this has some German linguistics experts worried.

Germany has borrowed or adopted 10,000 English words into their own language since 1990. At least that's what NPR authoritatively says, as they apparently stood listening at the Berlin Wall as it fell and haven't stopped counting since.

Holger Klatte, the spokesman for the German Language Society, explains his concern to NPR.

"Languages do tend to affect one another, but the influence of English in Germany is so strong that Germans are having a hard time advancing their own vocabulary," he says.

Klatte says that can be a problem for Germans who may not know any English.

"The second world war and Nazi times have led Germans to downplay the importance of their language," he says. "Unlike the French, Finns and Poles — they promote their languages a lot more than we do."


If I'm Finnish, I'm suing whoever's promoting my language and demanding a refund. Even the Muppets chose the Swedish Chef over anything Finnish.

Anatol Stefanowitsch, an English linguistics professor at the Free University of Berlin, tells NPR that Germans are just overemphasizing the matter. As Stefanowitsch notes, roughly 25% of the German language comes from borrowed words. English, by comparison, borrows 40-80% of its words from other languages--and it's a healthy, robust language doing just fine.

"No language has ever disappeared because it borrowed words," Stefanowitsch says.

Quite true. It might become a hot mess like English, but it never disappeared.

The Fraggles were death obsessed.

Naturally.

Not for nothing, did you know in the international market The Fraggles were known as:
Fraglesy in Poland
Fragglama in Sweden
De Freggels in the Netherlands
Ha'Frogguelim in Israel
Fragglerne in Denmark
Fragglit in Finland
Fraggle Rock, a Rocha Encantada in Portugal
Los Fraguel in Spain
Dünya Fraggle in Turkey.

The last one sounds like a Quentin Tarantino version.

Elmo loves him some meth and poppers.

Awhile ago, Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash was accused by various men of partaking in sexual acts with them while they were underage.

Now Clash is being sued by a former partner, accused of smoking crystal meth and giving them 'poppers,' a type of inhalable club drug known for its sexual aiding abilities.

This is turning out to be like that special episode of Sesame Street where Snuffleupagus does crank and passes out in a Soho dumpster.

Personally, I always thought Miss Piggy was a Fascist.

Also from the interwebs recently:

Fox Business Network analysts say that The Muppets are communists.

I, for one, have always suspected Elmo of being a commie. Why the red fur, man? Why the hippie love? Why all the sharing??

Says Mr. Corporate Analyst #1:
"It's amazing how far the left will go just to manipulate your kids, to convince them, give the anti-corporate message."

Says Mr Corporate Analyst #2 in reply:
"They've been doing it for decades. Hollywood, the left, the media, they hate the oil industry...They hate corporate America. And so you'll see all these movies attacking it, whether it was 'Cars 2,' which was another kids' movie, the George Clooney movie 'Syriana,' 'There Will Be Blood,' all these movies attacking the oil industry, none of them reminding people what oil means for most people: fuel to light a hospital, heat your home, fuel an ambulance to get you to the hospital if you need that. And they don't want to tell that story."

I know! Why hasn't there been a film about someone fueling up an ambulance?!


Photo: A website called libcom.org. Libcom = libertarian communists. I don't know what that even remotely means, but the photo is cute/serves a purpose.

Jim Henson would've been seventy-five years old today.

If you didn't watch Sesame Street or The Muppets as a child, odds are you're an incomplete adult. And that's okay. That's what DVDs are for.

Some of the most important education you ever received, undoubtedly, was between the ages of 0 and 7 when the Muppets crew held their deepest influence on you. Not just alphabets (which they helped you learn) and counting (that, too) and colors (obviously) and shapes (yup)--not just typical things that come from books and classrooms and lesson plans so dutifully planned out.

No, the Muppets also taught you how to use your imagination and creativity--how to dream, how to pretend, how to find the quirks of intelligence so often neglected in grades K through 12. More than that, they taught you about feelings--not how to feel or what to feel--just that it was okay to feel, which is probably something your adult self has long battled trying to suppress for years. And it's something all of us could probably stand to have a little more of every day.

And all of that--the feelings, the imaginations, the creativity and whimsical daydreams of make-believe and pretending, of how to let your guard down and be just a little less self-conscious, a little less frightened, a little less on guard--a little more open to yourself and the world around you, whether that world was right beside you or halfway across the globe--was the result of Jim Henson.

He died twenty-one years ago at the much too young age of fifty-three. But his life continues through Big Bird and Fozzie Bear and Oscar the Grouch and Snuffleupagus and Miss Piggy. And, of course, Kermit. And for that, all of us should thank him.

The following is a video from Henson's memorial service about a week after he died, with all the puppeteers who worked with Jim singing a collection of his favorite Sesame Street songs. Go ahead. Try watching it around the 5-7 minute mark and not get a little frowny, or at the conclusion when all the puppets come out. Try.