Kermit Love was quoted once as saying,”Nope. No connection. He’s Kermit the Frog and I’m just Kermit the human.”
Who was Kermit Love? Mr. Love created Big Bird!
As we contemplate Mitt Romney’s threat to privatize Big Bird, we should consider how American it would be to eat Big Bird, presumably now branded ty Tyson, on Thanksgiving 2013.
Mitt seems to think we can outsource such public culture to Disney. The contrast between Mitt and the Bird’s creator is chilling.
Like an awful ot of creative geniuses, Kermit Love was a gay man. Like a huge number of the creative geniuses arising from the Depression, Kermit Love’s career wasalso a tribute to the New Deal. Uner Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration (WPA) Love worked as a designer for Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater.
The creator of such classic children’s characters as Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch and the Cookie Monster, Love went on to design Mr. Snuffleupagus. Kermit the actor played Willy the Hot Dog Man (at the right here) on Sesame Street, and had a whole other career designing for Jerome Robbins, Agnes DeMille and Kurt Weill,
Love died June 21st in Poughkeepsie, New York, at the ripe and delicious age of 91. He is survived by his partner of 50 years, Christopher Lyall.
Despite the coincidence of names, Love is not the namesake for the most famous of the Henson puppets. He was quoted once as saying,”Nope. No connection. He’s Kermit the Frog and I’m just Kermit the human.” I have trouble seeing anyone playing such a tribute to Mr. Romney.