Yes ant, yes. Nice post, and I watched the one of Mr. Hooper not coming back. I hadn't seen that probably since 1982, and I cried all over again. I just want to give Big Bird a great big hug to comfort him.
What a wonderful program, and such fond memories...

All these guys are dead, huh??

The actors who portrayed Mr. Hooper and David are dead, but as far as I know everyone else is still alive.

man this film still creeps me out.
here's the info I was thinking about, curteousy of IMDB

When the shark attacks Hooper's cage, there's live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than the shark's mouth when it attacks the boat moments later. These scenes were filmed by noted shark photographers Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor specifically for the movie. Because the Great White sharks they filmed would be smaller than the mechanical shark in the movie, they constructed a smaller version of Hooper's shark cage. Inside the cage they alternately used a small mannequin or a little person. One of the sharks they attracted got caught in the cage's cables and tore it apart trying to escape. The footage was so good that they changed the script to reflect the destroyed cage and Hooper escaping by hiding on the ocean floor. However, the small person used in the scene refused to go back in the miniature cage, which was damaged in the incident.

Oh LOL

Please Fletch, try harder and post something that doesn't come From MEMRITV and I will give credence to your views. But right now it's like saying Christianity is evil based on what you hear about it from the Westboro church. Am just glad that MEMRITV exists to satisfy your and ghostcake's perverse views on what is Islam and such.

Here is a direct link - http://www.memritv.org/

Notice anything? I thought you wouldn't. Too blind are the sheep to see, the continents slowly being split into 3.

"MEMRI has been criticized primarily for its choice of the content it selects for translation. Brian Whitaker, the Middle East editor for the UK Guardian newspaper, has criticized MEMRI for having a pro-Israel bias and agenda, and not being explicit about this on its website. He has written, "My problem with Memri is that it poses as a research institute when it's basically a propaganda operation", that material selected by MEMRI for translation, "further the political agenda of Israel, and ", and that, "MEMRI's website does not mention you [Carmon] or your work for Israeli intelligence. Nor does it mention MEMRI's co-founder, Meyrav Wurmser, and her extreme brand of Zionism ... Given your political background, it's legitimate to ask whether MEMRI is a trustworthy vehicle"

More recently, on his blog for the The Guardian, Whitaker claims that MEMRI misrepresented a segment of Tomorrow's Pioneers, a children's' television program produced by Hamas which showed examples of child incitement. Hussein Ibish, a spokesman for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee comments that "MEMRI performs a useful function but unfortunately they have a pro-Israel, right-wing agenda." He also says that: "There is of course some horrific stuff in the Arab press, but one tends to forget that the American press can also be very nasty.

Ken Livingstone, former British MP and the current Mayor of London, has stated of MEMRI that: "The translation and selection of quotes tend to portray Islam in a very negative light." He has accused MEMRI of "outright distortion". Ibrahim Hooper, a director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, stated in the Washington Times that "MEMRI's intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible." William Rugh, former US ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Yemen, describes MEMRI as a service which "does not present a balanced or complete picture of the Arab print media. ...Quotes are selected to portray Arabs as preaching hatred against Jews and westerners, praising violence and refusing any peaceful settlement of the Palestinian issue."

Leila Hudson writes in the journal Middle East Policy, "MEMRI simultaneously highlights stories emphasizing the most extreme stereotypes of clashing Arab and Islamic civilization, which would not otherwise come to light. In effect, it amplifies the noise that most effectively distracts from the projects of engagement and negotiation. This is compounded by the interlinked series of websites, blogs and forums on the right wing of the think-tank periphery. Like the Israeli disinformation site Debka.com, MEMRI produces and amplifies noise, while buttressing the weak 'clash of civilizations' theory with selective extremist writing."

Hamas is a terrorist organization and is dispeakable in the actions that it carries out (suicide bombings), but putting them forward as speaking for the entire region from a religious point of view is just about the stupidest thing ever. Let's not look at the root causes that allow Hamas to gain power... am sure it has NOTHING to do with historical context of the conflict and you know 60 year oppression of the Palestinian people who basically have NO say in their lives.

No clearly this video shows that we are all mental over there and should be wiped out with a few nuclear strikes. What are you waiting for?

I wait for the bright sunrise.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Yeah - about time, welcome to super-d-duper peter-t-hooper club. You've earned it.

As you may know Ive created a playlist of many of the dead videos on the sift. As its been there for awhile, and there have been quite a few views of it, very few vids have been fixed or discarded. I thought a list just of yours might be of some help. The list below are all your videos on my playlist. There may be a few errors, but I gave it my best shot.


http://www.videosift.com/video/Sesame-Street--Mr-Hooper-isnt-coming-back
http://www.videosift.com/video/This-man-has-his-priorities-straight
http://www.videosift.com/video/Airbus-A380-test-flight-I-thought-these-things-were-bigger
http://www.videosift.com/video/Sinatra-and-Jobim
http://www.videosift.com/video/Sesame-Street-In-Color
http://www.videosift.com/video/Hippo-Vs-Crocodile-Anyone-wanna-give-odds
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-ancient-sport-of-Tree-Catching
http://www.videosift.com/video/KLF-Justified-and-Ancient-Stand-by-the-Jams
http://www.videosift.com/video/KLF-Justified-and-Ancient-Stand-by-the-Jams
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Daily-Show-10-Fckng-years-Holiday-Edition
http://www.videosift.com/video/George-Bush-thinks-that-the-Prime-Minister-of-Canada-is-a-Pl
http://www.videosift.com/video/NEW-High-Fashion-Log-for-Girls
http://www.videosift.com/video/Every-annoying-TV-theme-song-from-the-last-30-years
http://www.videosift.com/video/Chrysler-Tomahawk-V10-Viper-Powered-Motorcycle
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Log-Drivers-Waltz
http://www.videosift.com/video/Ren-and-Stimpy-Black-Hole
http://www.videosift.com/video/Yogi-Bear-by-John-K-A-Day-in-the-Life-of-Ranger-Smith
http://www.videosift.com/video/Talking-Heads--Nothing-But-Flowers
http://www.videosift.com/video/Connie-Chungs-show-is-cancelled-this-is-her-reaction-W
http://www.videosift.com/video/Vincent-Price-on-the-Muppet-Show--Halloween-Spectacular
http://www.videosift.com/video/Its-a-Wonderful-Life-With-Bunnies
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Office-Michael-Scott-kisses-Oscar-NSF-Homophobes

Great post!

I have friends who helped with their legal fight for return. The case really exposed a very nasty, cruel and uncaring side of the British government.

Paradise Cleansed by John Pilger 10/11/04 - 'The Guardian'

"There are times when one tragedy, one crime tells us how a whole system works behind its democratic facade and helps us to understand how much of the world is run for the benefit of the powerful and how governments lie. To understand the catastrophe of Iraq, and all the other Iraqs along imperial history's trail of blood and tears, one need look no further than Diego Garcia.

The story of Diego Garcia is shocking, almost incredible. A British colony lying midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean, the island is one of 64 unique coral islands that form the Chagos Archipelago, a phenomenon of natural beauty, and once of peace. Newsreaders refer to it in passing: "American B-52 and Stealth bombers last night took off from the uninhabited British island of Diego Garcia to bomb Iraq (or Afghanistan)." It is the word "uninhabited" that turns the key on the horror of what was done there. In the 1970s, the Ministry of Defense in London produced this epic lie: "There is nothing in our files about a population and an evacuation."

Diego Garcia was first settled in the late 18th century. At least 2,000 people lived there: a gentle creole nation with thriving villages, a school, a hospital, a church, a prison, a railway, docks, a copra plantation. Watching a film shot by missionaries in the 1960s, I can understand why every Chagos islander I have met calls it paradise; there is a grainy sequence where the islanders' beloved dogs are swimming in the sheltered, palm-fringed lagoon, catching fish.

All this began to end when an American rear-admiral stepped ashore in 1961 and Diego Garcia was marked as the site of what is today one of the biggest American bases in the world. There are now more than 2,000 troops, anchorage for 30 warships, a nuclear dump, a satellite spy station, shopping malls, bars and a golf course. "Camp Justice" the Americans call it.

During the 1960s, in high secrecy, the Labour government of Harold Wilson conspired with two American administrations to "sweep" and "sanitize" the islands: the words used in American documents. Files found in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Record Office in London provide an astonishing narrative of official lying all too familiar to those who have chronicled the lies over Iraq.

To get rid of the population, the Foreign Office invented the fiction that the islanders were merely transient contract workers who could be "returned" to Mauritius, 1,000 miles away. In fact, many islanders traced their ancestry back five generations, as their cemeteries bore witness. The aim, wrote a Foreign Office official in January 1966, "is to convert all the existing residents ... into short-term, temporary residents."

What the files also reveal is an imperious attitude of brutality. In August 1966, Sir Paul Gore-Booth, permanent under-secretary at the Foreign Office, wrote: "We must surely be very tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks that will remain ours. There will be no indigenous population except seagulls." At the end of this is a handwritten note by DH Greenhill, later Baron Greenhill: "Along with the Birds go some Tarzans or Men Fridays ..." Under the heading, "Maintaining the fiction", another official urges his colleagues to reclassify the islanders as "a floating population" and to "make up the rules as we go along".

There is not a word of concern for their victims. Only one official appeared to worry about being caught, writing that it was "fairly unsatisfactory" that "we propose to certify the people, more or less fraudulently, as belonging somewhere else". The documents leave no doubt that the cover-up was approved by the prime minister and at least three cabinet ministers.

At first, the islanders were tricked and intimidated into leaving; those who had gone to Mauritius for urgent medical treatment were prevented from returning. As the Americans began to arrive and build the base, Sir Bruce Greatbatch, the governor of the Seychelles, who had been put in charge of the "sanitizing", ordered all the pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles. "They put the dogs in a furnace where the people worked," says Lizette Tallatte, now in her 60s," ... and when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried."

The islanders took this as a warning; and the remaining population were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives. On one journey in rough seas, the copra company's horses occupied the deck, while women and children were forced to sleep on a cargo of bird fertilizer. Arriving in the Seychelles, they were marched up the hill to a prison where they were held until they were transported to Mauritius. There, they were dumped on the docks.

In the first months of their exile, as they fought to survive, suicides and child deaths were common. Lizette lost two children. "The doctor said he cannot treat sadness," she recalls. Rita Bancoult, now 79, lost two daughters and a son; she told me that when her husband was told the family could never return home, he suffered a stroke and died. Unemployment, drugs and prostitution, all of which had been alien to their society, ravaged them. Only after more than a decade did they receive any compensation from the British government: less than £3,000 each, which did not cover their debts.

The behavior of the Blair government is, in many respects, the worst. In 2000, the islanders won a historic victory in the high court, which ruled their expulsion illegal. Within hours of the judgment, the Foreign Office announced that it would not be possible for them to return to Diego Garcia because of a "treaty" with Washington - in truth, a deal concealed from parliament and the US Congress. As for the other islands in the group, a "feasibility study" would determine whether these could be resettled. This has been described by Professor David Stoddart, a world authority on the Chagos, as "worthless" and "an elaborate charade". The "study" consulted not a single islander; it found that the islands were "sinking", which was news to the Americans who are building more and more base facilities; the US navy describes the living conditions as so outstanding that they are "unbelievable".

In 2003, in a now notorious follow-up high court case, the islanders were denied compensation, with government counsel allowed by the judge to attack and humiliate them in the witness box, and with Justice Ousley referring to "we" as if the court and the Foreign Office were on the same side. Last June, the government invoked the archaic royal prerogative in order to crush the 2000 judgment. A decree was issued that the islanders were banned forever from returning home. These were the same totalitarian powers used to expel them in secret 40 years ago; Blair used them to authorize his illegal attack on Iraq.

Led by a remarkable man, Olivier Bancoult, an electrician, and supported by a tenacious and valiant London lawyer, Richard Gifford, the islanders are going to the European court of human rights, and perhaps beyond. Article 7 of the statute of the international criminal court describes the "deportation or forcible transfer of population ... by expulsion or other coercive acts" as a crime against humanity. As Bush's bombers take off from their paradise, the Chagos islanders, says Bancoult, "will not let this great crime stand. The world is changing; we will win." "


Finally in 2006 Lord Justice Hooper and Mr Justice Cresswell ruled that orders made under the royal prerogative to prevent the return of the Chagos islanders to their homes were unlawful. They described as "repugnant" the action to exile the population of the islands. "The suggestion that a minister can, through the means of an order in council, exile a whole population from a British overseas territory and claim that he is doing so for the 'peace, order and good government' of the territory is, to us, repugnant," the judges said.

But the government are appealing (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/southern_counties/6333223.stm) and the right of return is still being denied!

(sorry for long post - but this one really gets to me!)

By the time Mr. Hooper died I had already grown out of Sesame Street and never saw this episode when it aired. Watching it in retrospect had me absolutely BAWLING... This is why we remember Sesame Street with such fondness. Because it didn't treat us like gaping maws of consumerism, it treated us with love and compassion...

I grew up with Mister Looper (Hooper! Hooper!). Loved him. I was a cranky teenager when he died, and too old to be watching Sesame Street, but I still remember being very sad when I belatedly heard that he had passed.

When our time is done, I hope that we were all able to earn the love and respect that this good man had.

I don't even remember Mr. Hooper even after I looked him up. Good clip!

http://www.tvacres.com/death_misc_hooper.htm for the transcript.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

One vote for Mr. Hooper.

gah, mad tv.

bjork's dated tricky, nellee hooper (producer for soul2soul & madonna), goldie, graham massey (808 state) & matthew barney. no-one on mad tv can compete with that.