Why did Kermit lose his voice?

If life were easy, it wouldn't be difficult. ~ Kermit the Frog

As you may have heard, after twenty-seven years voicing Kermit the Frog, a job he was given after Muppet founder Jim Henson passed away in 1990, Steve Whitmire was fired. Whitmire, gutted by the loss of a job he has had all his working life, has started a blog to give voice to his despair. Indignant that Whitmire refuses to leap quietly into that good swamp, Disney and Jim Henson's children accused him of “unacceptable business conduct”, adding that in Whitmore's hands, Kermit had become a “bitter, angry, depressed victim” of a changing business climate.

Whitmire alleges there were two minor incidents that led to the undeserved firing: a video shoot with Kermit, Fozzie Bear, and Miss Piggy in which the Screen Actors Guild advised him not to appear; and creative differences over a short-lived TV show in which Whitmire argued Kermit wouldn't lie about breaking up with Miss Piggy, but the script insisted that he did.

You had to know that Miss Piggy would be involved.

To understand where Kermit, Steve Whitmire and the Muppets brand is coming from, and place this dispute into some kind of context, I read Brian Jay Jones's biography of Jim Henson. You may be surprised to learn that Jim Henson, who studied to be a set designer and wanted to be a painter, was an opportunistic puppeteer: he fell in love with television and taught himself in a couple of weeks how to work with puppets so that he could audition for a puppeteering tv gig. Jim Henson is a classic case of growing into a passion rather than following a passion. Steve Whitmore followed his boyhood passion for puppetry, and it took him to Jim Henson. Both men saw puppetry as an art form, and loved their work, but only one was an original.

Long before they landed on Sesame Street, the Muppets were successful as a commercial enterprise, making a small fortune for Henson from commercials. Here's a sample of the ads he made for Wilkins Coffee back in the 1950s, featuring Kermit as an impish tadpole.

With his arrival on Sesame Street, Henson stopped doing commercials. For him Kermit, who had evolved into the closest character to Henson in real life, was never to be a pitchfrog. Henson acknowledged the uneasy balance between art and commerce and how hard it is for a creative person to function in a commercial world.

Eighteen-year-old Steve Whitmire joined the Muppets in the spring of 1978 after cold calling the New York office and landing an audition. Jim Henson's wife met Steve at the Atlanta airport and was struck by how he, with his box full of puppets that delighted the children seated nearby, reminded her of her husband. Whitmire was hired and began as an apprentice puppeteer operating Kermit's right hand (it was physically impossible for Henson to operate the entire puppet). After Henson's death from pneumonia, that perhaps his persistent optimism would not allow him to treat until it was too late, his son Brian asked that Whitmire become the voice of Kermit.

The typical response to the Muppet mess is “It's not easy being green”, but what does that catchphrase really mean? Henson first performed the song in 1970 with Kermit alone in a darkened forest.

Today, when everybody strives to be extraordinary, blending in with ordinary things is harder than ever. Nobody heard of Steve Whitmire until this week. He let Kermit sparkle while he faded into the background. To be ordinary and revel in your ordinariness is beautiful, and liberating. There is nothing else to do except relax into the green.

You can judge Whitmire's performance as Kermit for yourself, but I think he's pretty sticky. Henson's children say Kermit has flattened as a character, which along with “drain the swamp” is one of the nastiest of insults you can hurl at a frog. If you read Henson's biography, you get the sense that he was a gentle soul who loved making humour and blowing things up, but would never stoop to cutting someone down.

Henson had a “ridiculous optimism” that infused everything he did, and would offer this advice to Steve and to everyone at the wronged end of a dismissal slip.

I believe that we form our own lives, that we create our own reality, and that everything works out for the best. ~ Jim Henson

If there is a problem with Kermit, it's a problem that's endemic to the Muppets themselves. When they appeared as regulars on the first season of Saturday Night Live and the writers didn't know what to do with them, John Belushi called them the mucking Fuppets. Putting the Muppets in the hands of writers who didn't have a hand in them was a problem that would return in 2016 with ABC's short-lived The Muppets, the show that landed Steve Whitmire in the hot water that eventually boiled him for voicing his concerns about Kermit lying.

Henson moved on from the disappointment of SNL, and the mid-70s, The Muppet Show was the most popular show in the world with The Muppet Show Album kicking The Beatles' Live at the Hollywood Bowl off the top of the British charts. The success of The Muppet Movie in 1979 invited inevitable comparisons to Walt Disney, but Henson would have none of it.

I like Disney, but I don't ever particularly want to do what he did. He built this great, huge empire. I'm not particularly inclined to do that. You get that large a thing going, and I'm not sure the quality of the work can be maintained. ~ Jim Henson

The Muppets were sold to Disney in 2004. Muppetmania was generations ago. Is there a role for goofy humour grounded in decency in a world filled with cynicism and anger? Can the innocence of a simple puppet make the world a better place?

Henson was the steward of the Muppet brand, a tireless fighter against puppetry prejudice who bristled at the suggestion that he was a children's entertainer. Henson felt as if he were a part of puppetry's ancient lineage and would tirelessly experiment with different modes of artistic expression. It is that restless spirit of experimentation that is missing from the Muppets today, deadened by the profit motive and the lack of a singular passionate advocate. The Muppets need another Jim Henson, but they aren't going to find that maverick voice at Disney.

What would you recommend to the Muppets to return to the green of their glory days? The best idea in the comment section below gets a very special prize. ;)

This Week in Jamie Dimon

Jamie Dimon, that adorable muppet of bankers, is still feeling the reverberations of last week's outburst in which, as you may recall, the JPMorgan CEO said he felt embarrassed as an American traveling abroad because the United States has yet to enact the recommendations outlined in his public policy paper, aka JPMorgan's letter to shareholders.

The Dimon Blow Up had The Wall Street Journal pondering the likelihood of Dimon being the next Democratic nominee for president, since blowing up is now considered to be an attractive feature in a leader. Such a scenario raises the tantalizing possibility of a Jamie Dimon-Elizabeth Warren ticket, two characters who will quickly become one of the funniest comedy duos anywhere, providing teachable moments for millions, even as they poke, prod, tease and taunt each other.

And finally...

We have nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and rats falling from the ceiling. Either it's the latest episode of American Horror Story or another day at Chipotle. Activist investor Bill Ackman, who never saw an investment too scary to take on, has a 10% stake in Chipotle, This week, he tweeted this fearless photo.

May your weekend be 100% rat-and-nausea-free, and blissfully green.

- Lynne

Recommended reading

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Lucy Kellaway, who will be leaving her post at The Financial Times to become a maths teacher, had these parting words about her losing battle against corporate claptrap. [The Irish Times] If you're a visual person, you can watch her perform her column here.

The Enron emails have much to teach us about sucking up electronically. [The New Yorker]

1999AD is a short film made in 1967 that predicted a lot of today's technology. Unfortunately, it didn't get gender roles quite right. [Quartz]