For those of you who don't know, let me catch you up to speed:
>Steve Whitmire, the man who took on the role of Kermit The Frog after Jim Henson's death in 1990, was apparently fired by the Walt Disney Company (the owners of The Muppets franchise for about 12-13 years) in October of 2016.
>This explains why over the past six months none of Whitmire's characters (like Kermit, Rizzo, and The Newsman) have appeared in any Muppet videos or television appearances.
>A few days after his first statement, Whitmire posted another statement on his blog vaguely implying that the Walt Disney Company wanted to get away from Jim Henson's vision for the characters, and he was fired for trying to stop Disney from going forward with any of their projects.
Now that brings us to today:
>Cheryl Henson, the President of the Jim Henson Foundation and a member of the Board of Directors for The Jim Henson Company, released pic related on Facebook today, stating that Steve's Kermit is disgraceful to her father's legacy and it was her brother Brian (who's probably more involved with the company than her) who said that Steve should be the new Kermit (although Whitmire said in an interview several years ago that ALL the Henson children agreed that he should take over).
Cheryl Henson (daughter of Jim Henson) kicks the recently fired Steve Whitmire while he's down
>(although Whitmire said in an interview several years ago that ALL the Henson children agreed that he should take over)
Correction: it was Brian, Jane Henson (Jim's wife), and Frank Oz who agreed that Steve should be the new Kermit.
>yet another dumb cunt sides with those who are trying to destroy her heritage's legacy
What's the matter, user? you seem overly salty
Statement from Muppets Studio (courtesy ToughPigs.com):
>"The role of Kermit the Frog is an iconic one that is beloved by fans and we take our responsibility to protect the integrity of that character very seriously. We raised concerns about Steve’s repeated unacceptable business conduct over a period of many years and he consistently failed to address the feedback. The decision to part ways was a difficult one which was made in consultation with the Henson family and has their full support."
Why would Disney/Muppets Studio go to the Henson family? The Hensons have been pretty hands off for years...
Did jim really want to make this a bitchfest?
There was no way he could have seen this coming.
Who knows what Jim wanted?
Jim wanted riots. Why are we not rioting?
>President of the Jim Henson Foundation
This bitch is literally living off the legacy of her father
So they could pay them off before they had a chance to be on Steve's side.
This just seems needlessly bitchy on her part. I don't even know where she's getting this Bitter Victim Kermit idea from.
Hell, shouldn't the blame be on the writers and not the actors if that's the problem?
What the fuck did Whitmire do to get this response?
I gotta know
I have more respect for those grabbing more and more power in society than those who happily surrender it to them.
this kind of shit happens all the time. Frank Zappa's wife has done everything in her power to keep his music obscure and inaccessible over the decades since his death because she resents the fact that she allowed him to fuck groupies will he was alive.
He kept drunkenly fucking Miss Piggy and he was really good at finding the puppet while drunk after they kept hiding it from him.
He disagreed with the writing on the ABC show as not being in character with characters he has been working with and performing since they were created. Clearly Disney knew better and the show was canceled after a single season.
Jim told him in a dream.l
He didn't really write any plans for how the Muppets should continue without him, the only thing he left were scripts and ideas for future projects.
I'm pretty sure they only consulted Cheryl because they knew Brian Henson is the only one (or maybe even John Henson before he died) who's honest-to-god trying to keep his father's legacy alive and trying so hard to bring many of Jim's projects to life in one form or another.
Just watch. Shortly after his characters are recast, Muppets are going to become much more "inclusive" with LGBT and similar nonsense.
>Muppets are going to become much more "inclusive" with LGBT and similar nonsense.
"They're puppets. They don't exist below the waist!" -Steve Whitmire to students in a Q&A session at Carnegie Mellon University.
I wonder what her Disney paycheck looks like?
>he had not been not funny or fun
>not been not
>not
what?
Sometimes you need to be serious. He was having way too much fun, the hippy needed to be knocked down a peg.
>this was said in a response to bert and ernie being gay
Well, looks like The Muppets are about to pull a Korra and make them gay for the sjw points.
Then how did they ride bikes in the movies? Checkmate, ashiest.
>hippy
No, he just plays a hippy in the movies.
Quit riding Jim's corpse you scuzzy hoe.
Holy shit what a fucking cunt.
Nah, you sold it to Disney. You can't blame Steve for the shows hack writing either.
Probably got a few sheckles for it from Disney.
OP here: Just so everyone knows, I'm not the monster who took the screencap and liked this Facebook post.
Honestly, this just comes down to his word against theirs, and I don't want to jump to conclusions without the full story.
But I'm inclined to side with the only person in this story who has an actual, demonstrable creative tie to the show, and not the company known for hiring yes-men creators and the lady who's done nothing her entire life but make money off of her father's creation.
Cheryl Henson instills about as much faith in me that she has the best interest of the Muppets at heart as Courtney Love does of Kurt Cobain.
So they can go "see, the actual Hensons are on our side!" and try and nip this controversy in the bud.
Yeah, the Muppets have never been associated with social progressiveness. As we all know, Henson hated all minorities and alternative lifestyles.
Richard Hunt was gay and that didn't stop Jim from hiring him for his talents.
>named dick hunt
>becomes gay
Honestly, what were his parents expecting?
Unless he was also writing him none of that is his fault.
Yeah, it's like he's searching for penises or something
In fact he actively tried to change the writing which is part of what got him canned.
SEE I TOLD you based Disney made the right call
They ALWAYS do
But she wants to make Kermit great again. Like how he was back in the good old days.
Don't you have some D23 or MCU thread to be in?
She's just doing what The Mouse told her to say.
what the hell did Steve Whitmire even do to warrant all of this? Yelling Racial epithets? Fucking boys?
New thread says he was "giving unwanted notes during the short-lived Muppets reboot on ABC on how the characters should act" and something about a Union dispute.
I forgot the specifics but apparently one state banned Sesame Street for a while on racial grounds since the cast of children was "highly integrated."
Mississippi.
>In May 1970, a state commission in Mississippi voted to exclude to host the show on its state educational TV network owing to concerns over the show's inclusive racial message. A member of the commission told the New York Times, that "Mississippi was not yet ready" for the show's integrated cast.
Mostly this
>Whitmire, who was asked to take over Kermit by Henson's family after the creator's untimely death in 1990, said that an instance of a note was over a script for the new ABC series, canceled last year, in which Kermit lied to his nephew, Robin, about his breakup with Miss Piggy.
>"I don't think Kermit would lie to him," Whitmire explained. "I think that is Robin came to Kermit he would say 'things happen, people go their separate ways, but that doesn't mean we don't care about you.' Kermit is too compassionate to lie to him to spare his feelings."
>He continued, "We have been doing these characters for a long, long time and we know them better than anybody. I thought I was aiding to keep it on track and I think a big reason why the show was canceled (after one season last fall) was because that didn't happen. I am not saying my notes would have saved it, but I think had they listened more to all of the performers, it would have made a really big difference.'"
>Steve was fired from Sesame Street in 2014
>Was replaced by Billy Barkhurst
>Burt and Ernie were still straight
>Billy is now fired as well and replace by Peter Linz
Oh god, it's finally happening isn't it?
>Steve was fired from Sesame Street in 2014
No: "Beginning in 2006, Whitmire's availability for Sesame Street had somewhat lessened due to his commitment to projects with The Muppets Studio."
Steve wasn't fired from Ernie, he couldn't combine Sesame with the Muppets so he chose to focus on that instead
>Guys this is good. Remember to buy all the Muppet related things in Disney's future so I can have more money
I don't expect Muppets to get any better in the future.
Jim continues to roll in his grave.
Having blacks on tv is not the same thing as preaching normalcy of homosexual and transsexual lifestyles. It's a form of conditioning that says "Hey. Being gay and cutting your dick off is cool. Join us!"
Might as well teach kids to smoke like they did in the 50s.
>So they can go "see, the actual Hensons are on our side!" and try and nip this controversy in the bud.
The issue I take with that is whether or not the other Hensons are willing to agree with Cheryl or go against her. I'm certain Brian would at least have something to say about this situation. given 's post.
Or maybe it's just saying "don't be a dick to gay people or trannies just because they're gay or trannies".
>I'm certain Brian would at least have something to say about this situation
I'm sure he's fucking furious right now. He's probably holding his tongue because he wants to be the better person of the Henson family.
Same thing.
Gail died recently and I'm finally starting to see Zappa records creep back into stores
He has to speak up if only to counter Disney's statement of them supposedly being okay with this.
When you accept radicalized belief systems into a relative vacuum, the radicals take over.
Jesus christ, talk about throwing someone under the bus. It would have been one thing if she had simply voiced the opinion that change isnt always bad or whatever, but she really goes all out about defacing Steve here. From call him a self serving liar, or historical revisionist, to shitting all over the body of his work.
I wonder how much money disney passed her under the table?
Under what circumstances are little kids going to be interacting with actual gays or trannies? Any parents who pushes the idea that their boy is really a girl or girl is really a boy on a child too young to know better for themselves should be considered an abuser on par with a pedophile.
There's nothing radical about not letting homos be homo. It's pretty radical to suggest we should censor media because it doesn't promote morals you approve of.
I'm sorry but even as kid I knew those two were fucking gay. Two men don't just live as roommates and share a bedroom for 4 decades.
After squeezing out everyone else.
Do you also think that shows promoting murder to children should be allowed too, because you don't see anything wrong with it?
A lot if they were making her this willing to slander Steve this badly.
Hell, I wonder if Cheryl even gave two shit about the Muppets as a whole to begin with.
Nah she just wanted to be on top.
>4 decades.
That's not how time works with Muppets.
>I wonder if Cheryl even gave two shit about the Muppets as a whole to begin with
She essentially does nothing except approve her brother's projects, she doesn't really care about anything except the almighty dollar.
Wew lad that's quite a leap
this is your brain on Sup Forums
It's also one of the few shows out there with an accurate, informed, and respectful portrayal of vampires.
>Do you also think that shows promoting murder to children should be allowed too
Yes. It's not your responsibility to be a kid's parent, FCC.
>accurate, informed, and respectful portrayal of vampires.
He has arithmomania, and the early episodes he could use hypnosis.
The literary got nothing else right.
>Under what circumstances are little kids going to be interacting with actual gays
Just about anywhere. Homosexuals aren't completely segregated from the rest of the world.
No, but they should be.
They used to have monasteries and things.
I say we should do that again.
Lending credence to the homo lifestyle is fine in itself. There's nothing wrong with gay people. Pretending that gays are common and normal is inaccurate and is part of liberal conditioning. It's using pop culture to paint a false picture of society.
It becomes even worse when the media starts pushing the narrative of trans normalcy and the heroism of transsexuals. Transexuality isn't normal and it isn't healthy. But pop culture is creating the idea that it's fashionable to be inclusive of this shit.
This.
just because you are a family member of a great person does not make you great.
it's like when general pattons family didn't back trump even though they have the same manner of speaking and talk exactly the same
>Steve performed Kermit as a bitter, angry, depressed, victim.
what is it with frogs and depression
You can only do so much with the shit scripts you're given
>blaming the guy hired to say the lines instead of those writing the lines
Fucking fuck, Steve thought those lines were OOC, god dammit
Fucking bitch, I hope Brian and John Henson say something
>John Henson
You might wanna sit down, user. I have some bad news...
It's not easy being green
Things have taken a turn for the worse, Brian actually joined in the shitflinging and has thrown Steve under the bus as well. How big a cheque did Disney give them, holy shit.
nytimes.com
>“He played brinkmanship very aggressively in contract negotiations,” said Lisa Henson, president of the Jim Henson Company, and Jim Henson’s daughter, in a telephone interview.
>Ms. Henson said Mr. Whitmire was adamantly opposed to having an understudy for his role, which presented problems when it came to what she called “B-level performances, such as a ribbon-cutting.” She said he was unwilling to appear on some of these occasions but also refused to develop an understudy and that he “blackballed young performers” by refusing to appear on the show with them.
>Brian Henson, the company’s chairman and Jim Henson’s son, said that while Mr. Whitmire’s Kermit was “sometimes excellent, and always pretty good,” things changed when he was off set.
>“He’d send emails and letters attacking everyone, attacking the writing and attacking the director,” he said. .”
>In a reflection of Disney’s determination to undercut Mr. Whitmire, executives there also arranged an interview for a Times reporter with a producer on a Muppets-related project who expressed the same criticisms as the Henson family. The producer declined to speak for attribution, however.
For Mr. Whitmire, who didn’t respond to the criticisms leveled by the Hensons or Disney, this is the end of a professional journey that has occupied his entire adult life. His bond with the Muppets began when, at age 10, he wrote a letter to Mr. Henson asking questions about puppetry around the same time “Sesame Street” had its premiere.
Also something I noticed from that 2015 picture of the opening of the The Center for Puppetry Arts Jim Henson Exhibition, Steve Whitmire was photoshopped out of it. Note the repeating pattern on the door.
I honestly am starting to think the Henson family really did despise Whitmire, and that Steve escalated it well enough with Disney so that the company rang up Henson to make this decision
>Steve Whitmire was photoshopped out of it.
The hell? That's some Stalin shit
I'm at the point I'm not willing to believe any 'professional' news source, but if this is true it would mean having his balls cut off was justified. It makes Disney look entirely in the right.
Which means it's probably a load of lies.
>“He’d send emails and letters attacking everyone, attacking the writing and attacking the director,”
He should. It was shit writing and shit directing.
>Having blacks on tv is not the same thing as preaching normalcy of homosexual and transsexual lifestyles.
It was in the 60's, user.
>watched The Muppets on ABC
>it was exactly this episode that made me stop because it was that bad
I also had problems with Fozzie and Scooter's characterizations in the show and bizarrely it always seemed like Gonzo had no interest in the show as a character actor when he usually is more enthusiastic.
So Kermit is now just floating there?
Seems weird for the entire Henson senpai to suddenly come out of the woodwork and all of a sudden backstab Steve Whitmire after being more than okay with him being Kermit for years.
Being black is a skin color. Being gay is a lifestyle choice. One is merely a surface level attribute. The other is a way of life.
Again, it's not the same thing.
>It's not easy being green
To be a devil's advocate for a moment.
These kinds of internal spats would naturally go unadvertised. To most people it would look very sudden. This kind of 'sudden firing' happens a lot. No one advertises the internal politics of their business.
This is why anyone who has a job and doesn't want to get fucked should keep a personal record of everything that happens. Even minor spats. In the end, it looks like he said she said to outsiders.
Steve gives a video interview with Inside Edition:
>insideedition.com
Can anyone tell me what he says in the video? Internet is shitting itself right now.
Oh, also.
If any job dispute turns in to a legal matter, any lawyer would probably advise you to say as little as possible publicly. If he's being dead silent on his own behalf, there might be a reason.