(Isn’t it miraculous how there seems to be a Fraggle Rock song that fits every occasion?)

Dear Steve, especially…but also friends, readers, “followers,” and people who surfed in here randomly looking for extended metaphors on child care or something…

(To that last group: thank you for stopping by, and I’m sorry that I didn’t have what you were looking for.)

I have a confession to make:

I went to a Halloween party on October 21st dressed “sort of approximately” like Kermit, with the intention of, to paraphrase what I said on October 19th, getting the word out, trying to evoke some “epiphanies” in the casual fans, perhaps spurring them to some kind of action, but at the very least, bringing them into the conversation.

And I failed.  

What follows is an explanation, not an excuse:

What you have to understand, first of all, is that I communicate so much more effectively through the written word than via face-to-face communication.  In person, I tend toward introversion almost to the point of social awkwardness.  When it comes to conversation, I am much more comfortable following somebody else’s lead rather than taking the initiative.

When I went to this party in Kermit costume, I knew that the people there would tend to the more casual side of the Muppet fan spectrum, i.e., not people who read the fan sites and obsess about it the way we do.  But since the Schism was a fairly big story back in July, I anticipated that they would have at least heard about it, and when I went to the party in my approximate Kermit costume, I thought that that would spark comments along the lines of, “Oh yeah, what was it I heard a few months ago about Kermit getting fired or something…?” And then that would be my conversational “in.”

But nobody said anything along those lines at all.  As far as I could tell, they didn’t even know what had happened.  In retrospect, of course, I realize that that was all to the good; not having been poisoned by the vitriol that Disney and the Hensons had been spewing all over the place, perhaps they would have been more receptive to your side of the story, Steve.  But I didn’t anticipate having to start at square one with them, and it threw me off my conversational game–which, as I mentioned, is not all that strong to begin with.  

Again, all of this is just to explain my hypocrisy, not to excuse it.

I am so sorry, Steve.  I feel that I let you down.  You gave me a job to do, and I missed an opportunity to do it.  Faced with the choice between doing what was right and what was easy, I chose the latter.  I’m a disgrace to my pointed felt collar and styrofoam Kermit eyes.

I failed to practice what I preached, I talked the talk but couldn’t walk the walk, and … well, I could spout clichés about it until the cows come home, but the simple, unpleasant truth is that I screwed up.  And there’s not much I can do about it now, Steve, but to apologize to you from the very bottom of my heart, and from the soles of my Kermit-green socks.