Culture Clash

If you’ve been watching the news at all over the past couple of weeks then you have heard about Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who brings Elmo to life (if you haven’t, Google it). With Clash’s exit, what does it mean for Elmo? Some public relations practitioners are recommending bringing in someone else to fill the role. Is Elmo tainted by Clash’s actions – guilt by association? Ragan’s PR Daily recently posted the article “4 things you didn’t know about Sesame Street’s PR”. They state that the handling of the incident with Clash was “textbook crisis PR.” If you were a member of Sesame Street’s public relations team, how would you suggest they handle this crisis? Do you agree with the way the handled it? In your opinion, what is Elmo’s future?

 It means that they will get a new guy to voice Elmo. They aren’t going to forfeit one of their most profitable characters. Sure he will sounds slightly different, but kids will not notice. And quite frankly, it is not that hard of a voice to replicate, especially for a voice actor.

If I was a member of Sesame Street’s PR team, I would have handled it in a similar way. When someone on the show is tainted like this, you must distance yourself from him. Clash has now admitted that he is gay and likes young men, which to me isn’t really a big deal, but he is  the star of a kids show, which is a big deal. If he took part in his gay escapades in private, or at least out of the limelight (as I’m sure he did), then that would be okay because it was not well known that he did Elmo’s voice. However, when it surfaces that this is the man who does Elmo’s voice, and oh by the way he’s gay and may or may not have had relations with a 16 year old boy, then it becomes a problem. I feel bad for the him, I saw a Youtube video of an interview of him and he seems like a nice guy. However, termination was the only route to take on this matter because it was happening around a children’s television show.