Say what you will about Jesse Jackson, but even during his shakedown days, he wasn’t trying to shake down puppets.

Standards are lower now and every fake viral video racism controversy becomes a shakedown or a race riot. Or both. And so bad times have come to Sesame Street. This particular stupid story began with a viral video claiming that Rosita, a Mexican puppet, didn’t stop to hug some little girls because they were black, even though considering the field of visibility of someone wearing one of those costumes, costumed characters are just as likely to bump into garbage cans or lampposts. 

“THIS DISGUSTING person blatantly told our kids NO then proceeded to hug the little white girl next to us! Then when I went to complain about it, they looking at me like I’m crazy,” Instagram user @__jodii__ said in her post. “I asked the lady who the character was and I wanted to see a supervisor and she told me SHE DIDNT KNOW !!”

“THIS DISGUSTING person blatantly told our kids NO then proceeded to hug the little white girl next to us! Then when I went to complain about it, they looking at me like I’m crazy.”

These days there’s a short escalator ride from crazy to congressional black caucus involvement.

The Congressional Black Caucus is requesting to meet with the head of the “Sesame Street”-themed amusement park, Sesame Place, after a video that showed a costumed character ignoring two young Black girls went viral. 

“Sesame Street is one of the nation’s highest-rated TV shows that, at one time, more than 95 percent of all American Preschoolers watched,” the caucus said in a release Saturday. “So, naturally, Sesame Place should be where all children can go to have fun and celebrate. Sadly, that has not been the case.” 

The caucus, led by its chairwoman, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), said it wants to meet with Park President and General Manager Cathy Valeriano to discuss changes, plans of action and training that the park plans to implement.

Everyone wearing one of those costumes must now be forced to undergo critical race theory training at the hands of its political allies and donate to the “scholarship funds” of the CBC and their “non-profit foundations”.

Nothing actually happened here.

“Regarding the incident yesterday. …the performer portraying the Rosita character has confirmed that the ‘no’ hand gesture seen several times in the video was not directed to any specific person, rather it was a response to multiple requests from someone in the crowd who asked Rosita to hold their child for a photo, which is not permitted. The Rosita performer did not intentionally ignore the girls and is devastated about the misunderstanding.” 

But that won’t stop the Congressional Black Caucus from demanding its share of the payoffs.