THE MUPPETS AND PORNOGRAPHY, CONT.: I already commented on the slow slouch toward Gomorrah suffered by the Muppets in the years since the death of Jim Henson- and it seems like they've taken notice of the problem. Rapper Snoop Dogg was scheduled to appear in a new Muppets television movie, "A Very Merry Muppet Christmas," which was to feature Snoop rapping a duet with Dr. Dre stand-in Kermit the Frog. But now the Snoop scene has been cut from the film, and rumblings are that the deletion came as a result of shareholder pressure after the partnership was announced in the Wall Street Journal- after all, Snoop (in addition to his years of highly ribald lyrics) has recently been co-producing porn films with the Hustler empire. The filmmakers deny that the cuts had anything to do with this and maintain that Snoop's scenes were "unnecessary to the storyline." I'm not buying that though- how could any scene in this movie (or any other recent Muppets movie, for that matter) possibly be more entertaining than Snoop and Kermit, rapping?
Posted by Stephen Silver at October 4, 2002 12:13 AM