A Grande Cuppa’ Joe To Go

I love Joe Hennes. And what’s not to love? From the first time I met him nearly twenty years ago as an enthusiastic, wide eyed Muppet fanatic, I found him to be a smiling, gracious, and approachable, fellow, one of the nicest guys you’d ever wanna meet.

For any who don’t know, Joe runs an impressive fan site called Tough Pigs where Muppet fans gather behind cute little internet handles to speculate on whatever they want anonymously. I jest, but Tough Pigs is truly quite an accomplishment.

Evidently Joe felt a need to respond to a recent post of mine written to offer some clarity to the many requests for my thoughts on the state of Kermit. It seems that Joe has come to the conclusion that despite a full decade having passed I am somehow stuck at the anger stage of grief over no longer being Kermit.  In fact, he’s convinced of it, going on and on.

According to Joe, he has some understanding of how I feel because he, too, ‘lost a job that his identity was wrapped up within’. I a sorry to hear of your struggles, Joe.  So, he starts out with a tone that almost sounds like empathy –  I’m all for more empathy in this world!  But legitimate empathy involves having actual contact with another person to first know what they’re feeling. Otherwise it’s not possible to know what you are empathizing with. Joe is speculating, so what at first sounds like empathy turns out to be projection. That happens a lot these days when people assume that everyone shares their emotional temperament and reactions to situations. 

Joe then immediately dismisses all opinions about the present-day situation with the character (the actual subjective point of my post…) from the discourse, leading you to his conclusion about my difficulty in “moving on” (again, projection) and the pointlessness of my post (even though I stated the reason for the post clearly).  He tells us that “Anger, bargaining, and despair are unavoidable”…could it be that Joe thinks by telling you that I am ‘angry’ and ‘desperate’ you will be convinced that I am a bitter old curmudgeon and you’ll suddenly be unable to decipher truth?  

What Joe doesn’t know is that I disentangled my identity from The Muppets roundabout 2005 when it was clear to me that they were going nowhere fast because of the attitude of the executives at Disney. Though I continued to try and keep Jim’s influence at the forefront of it all, it was obvious to me that I had to begin looking for other means of creative fulfillment beyond The Muppets. Joe’s ‘anger, bargaining, and despair’ are actually quite short-lived when a situation is viewed through a lens of equanimity. 

Not to worry, Joe – No need to speculate about my well-being and mental health.  As hard as it might be to understand both are are fully intact without my having to be a part of today’s Muppets. And no need to ‘glare’, either. The post focuses on Kermit because Kermit and his importance within the Muppet dynamic are the subject of the post. He is the character on whom hundreds of fans have asked me for my opinion.

Joe’s presumptions go on to lead him to the conclusion that I have deep desires to somehow become re-involved with The Muppets saying he cannot imagine my being happy with any Muppet project that I am not involved in.  Again, this seems to be a projection of how Joe assumes someone like me would have to feel. I was always quite happy with Muppet projects prior to my involvement since they were consistent and faithful to the characters. 

He also concludes that I ‘acted rashly’ and wrote the post ‘without thought’ because there were issues with the formatting.  Really Joe? I suppose you probably spend a great deal of your time seated at your computer auditing your website, not something my time allows me to do. I have a life that does not afford me the time to become highly proficient in all things WordPress. My apologies, Joe, if my posts are below your standard. I suggest you try reading them for their content, not their font size. 

Perhaps Joe has forgotten the depth of my involvement with the origination of so much that has sustained the Muppets thus far, and from whom my sense of that depth was gathered. I stood on the top of the mountain alongside those who brought it into being. I have no desire to reside in the valley today. 

Another thing Joe might not understand is the commitment of working in service of something bigger than one’s own self. I find that lack of understanding to be the case with an awful lot of people in this world. For me, Jim Henson‘s influence is vital for The Muppets to exist, not only within the characters and projects we find them in, but in every aspect of how they are managed. Without it, it’s just a nice box of puppets. If one is willing to stand up for what they know to be true by putting literally everything in their life on the line, there are no regrets and no desires to be involved in something inferior to the original. 

In the end, Joe makes my point for me. His is an entirely exterior/objective assessment of every aspect of it all, leaving him to have become a part of the ‘Muppets At Any Cost’ branch of the fan base deconstructing version after version after version. It is as though Kermit , himself, is on life support and no one is courageous enough to humanely pull the plug.  

You might expect someone who has considerable time, energy, and effort, invested in a website devoted to the work of Jim Henson to be less dismissive of a knowledge base that stems directly from Jim, himself. I still think of how giddy Joe was over the access to a preview of these in-depth perspectives I related to him when he first interviewed me all those years ago. But as Joe seems to see it now, it’s just “pining for the past”.  

He questions my “agenda” reducing it to a “personal outcry’, and asks why anyone would “report on the status of a company they haven’t worked for in a full decade”.  If I have an “agenda”,  Joe, it is to inform fans about a man whose methodologies are being forgotten within the Muppet equation. I lived this, and I really do know what I’m talking about here.  As I think I made clear in my original post, inhabiting an established character with a basis of 70 years of accumulated public life can never be synthesized. It should/must be passed on. Sorry Joe, but no amount of years and no amount of screen time can somehow instill that into a person. 

Maybe Joe has never been a part of the core of something so extraordinary that it is unconscionable to watch as it’s foundations erode away after being sold off and mismanaged, especially when you’ve experience being ignored on the fundamentals of how it could have worked and remained faithful.  Or maybe Joe’s time working with his friends at Sesame Workshop has effected his objectivity a bit…pearls before tough swine, I suppose. Kermit might say “you can lead tough pigs to water…”. 

And, oh, by the way, I still love Joe!