Sesame Street composer reacts to his music being used for torture in Guantanamo Bay.
Christopher Cerf
Award-winning composer & lyricist, Sesame Street
Christopher Cerf is an author, record and TV producer, composer-lyricist, humorist, and co-founder and president of the educational media-production company Sirius Thinking, Ltd., where he serves as co-executive producer of the multiple award-winning children’s literacy show, Between the Lions, which recently completed its 10th season on PBS.
Cerf has won three Emmys and two Grammys for his musical contributions to Sesame Street (for which he has written over 300 songs since the show’s debut in 1970), was a senior editor at Random House, where he worked with such diverse authors as George Plimpton, Andy Warhol, and Dr. Seuss, and was a charter contributing editor of National Lampoon. He has also won two Emmys for outstanding writing in children’s television.
For all his success in TV, music, and publishing, Christopher Cerf is perhaps best known for his work as an author and satirist. He co-edited The Politically Correct Dictionary (with Henry Beard) and The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (with Victor Navasky), and in 2008, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush’s historic (if premature) victory speech aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln, he and Navasky collaborated again to produce Mission Accomplished!, a bestselling compendium of misstatements, failed predictions, and outright lies uttered in connection with America’s military adventure in Iraq.
In November 2012 (assuming the world does not end before that date), Simon & Schuster will publish Cerf and Henry Beard’s latest book, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca – a comprehensive field guide to things you absolutely, positively must not eat, drink, wear, take, grow, make, buy, use, or do, including an awful lot of toxic, lethal, horrible stuff that you thought was safe, good, or healthy. Painstakingly researched, alphabetized, cross-referenced, and thoroughly footnoted for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (Cerf and Beard apologize in advance if it doesn’t.)
Cerf has won three Emmys and two Grammys for his musical contributions to Sesame Street (for which he has written over 300 songs since the show’s debut in 1970), was a senior editor at Random House, where he worked with such diverse authors as George Plimpton, Andy Warhol, and Dr. Seuss, and was a charter contributing editor of National Lampoon. He has also won two Emmys for outstanding writing in children’s television.
For all his success in TV, music, and publishing, Christopher Cerf is perhaps best known for his work as an author and satirist. He co-edited The Politically Correct Dictionary (with Henry Beard) and The Experts Speak: The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation (with Victor Navasky), and in 2008, to commemorate the fifth anniversary of George W. Bush’s historic (if premature) victory speech aboard the U.S.S. Lincoln, he and Navasky collaborated again to produce Mission Accomplished!, a bestselling compendium of misstatements, failed predictions, and outright lies uttered in connection with America’s military adventure in Iraq.
In November 2012 (assuming the world does not end before that date), Simon & Schuster will publish Cerf and Henry Beard’s latest book, Encyclopedia Paranoiaca – a comprehensive field guide to things you absolutely, positively must not eat, drink, wear, take, grow, make, buy, use, or do, including an awful lot of toxic, lethal, horrible stuff that you thought was safe, good, or healthy. Painstakingly researched, alphabetized, cross-referenced, and thoroughly footnoted for easy reference, this book just might save your life. (Cerf and Beard apologize in advance if it doesn’t.)
