What Next, Oscar the Kindly?

Leave poor Cookie Monster alone. “Sesame Street’s” decision to make the blue glutton eat more healthfully, as an example for its preschool audience, opens the way to limitless depressing good-example-setting by Cookie’s pals.

Will concerns about bullying require Oscar the Grouch to act more kindly? Modeling less dorkish behavior, will Bert give up his paper-clip collection for good? Woe to the day when Big Bird learns to speak from his diaphragm instead of nasally whining through his beak.

The show’s new song, “A Cookie Is a Sometimes Food,” debuting today, will never replace “C is for Cookie.” In between platters of chocolate chip sin, C.M. will now devour fruits and vegetables. Yawn. Give us the guy who demanded his cookies now and scarfed them along with the plate.

Fine, encourage good dietary habits with animated vegetables, as “Sesame Street” also plans. Just remember that the engagingly goofy produce characters of the Christian-themed “Veggie Tales” never set off a storm of cucumber consumption. We don’t suppose any of the new skits will feature Elmo telling his pint-sized fans to turn off the show and go get some exercise.

The monsters of “Sesame Street” have a more important job. While the human actors on the show generally offer up life lessons on sharing, learning and other goody-goody stuff, the monsters connect with that lunacy inside all of us that grown-ups try to pretend doesn’t exist. By turns, and without pretense, the various monsters are rude, filthy, frightened, dreamy, confused, obsessed, fussy, dumb, demanding and greedy.

At one time, the villains and shadowy woods of fairy tales both Grimm and Andersen held up this mirror so children could acknowledge their darker selves. In the era of mass communications, we have Cookie Monster and company. Strip away their over-the-top folly and we’re left with a thin TV diet of good intentions.