Children’s show writer backtracks on Bert and Ernie comment

WASHINGTON: Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street may only be puppets, but that hasn’t stopped audiences from speculating over the years that the two roommates might be more than just best friends.

A longtime writer from the beloved children’s show on Tuesday appeared to confirm they were in fact a “loving couple”, only for its creators to deny the pair are together or have a sexual orientation. The writer, too, later seemed to backtrack.

Mark Saltzman, who was a staff writer on the programme between 1981 and 1990, told the website Queerty he had based the pair’s dynamic on his own long-term relationship with film editor Arnold Glassman.

“I remember one time that a column from the San Francisco Chronicle, a preschooler in the city turned to mom and asked ‘are Bert & Ernie lovers?’ And that, coming from a preschooler was fun,” he said.

“I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert and Ernie, they were. I didn’t have any other way to contextualise them.

“I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple.”

Saltzman added the Bert and Ernie’s interactions mirrored his own with Glassman, who was his partner for more than 20 years until his death in 2003.

Saltzman later told The New Yorker his comments were misinterpreted.

He said that he and Glassman were much like Bert and Ernie, opposites who found a way to love each other, the magazine said.

“As a writer, you just bring what you know into your work,” The New Yorker quoted him as saying in a phone interview on Tuesday night.

“Somehow, in the uproar, that turned into Bert and Ernie being gay,” he said. “There is a difference.”

Sesame Workshop, which produces the show, denied the pair’s relationship was anything more than platonic.

“As we have always said, Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves,” the non-profit organisation said.

“Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”