Look: There’s no denying it anymore. Kevin Clash, the voice of Elmo, is a bad man. After the first allegations came out about Clash sleeping with a potentially underage man, I willed myself to give Clash the benefit of the doubt. He was so charming and harmless-seeming in the documentary, Being Elmo, that it just didn’t add up. Moreover, the victim’s retraction plus the retraction of the retraction gave me license to reluctantly side with Clash. When the second accuser came out of the woodwork, I dismissed him, too, because he was asking for $5 million, and it felt like a money play. Then Kevin Clash resigned from Sesame Street and I thought, oh, well, he’s doing it for the good of the show. KEVIN CLASH IS A TEAM PLAYER. That may be true, but Kevin Clash is a team player who likes to bang teenage boys, y’all.
We ignored the third accuser because, GOD, won’t this story just go away already? We get it, we get it: There’s a lot of opportunists trying to take advantage of Kevin Clash’s pocket book. But now?
Now, a fourth accuser has come forward, and for the first time, Clash now possibly faces criminal charges. Why? Because this accuser — who was 16 or 17 at the time — was given a plane ticket by Kevin Clash to fly from Miami to New York so that Clash could get his hang-low stinky. In fact, this accuser claims that he has been molested before, and that Kevin Clash invited him to New York to “be his Dad,” and help him to heal the psychic wounds of his sexual abuse by SEXUALLY ABUSING HIM.
Anyway, the transportation across state lines gives the feds jurisdiction to bring a criminal case. Meanwhile, Kevin Clash has taped enough episode of Elmo to take Sesame Street until 2014, which means that when any of us parents hear Elmo’s obnoxiously irritating voice, we’ll also know that it’s probably the same voice Clash used to get teenage boys under the covers, where Elmo’s Beeker was waiting for him.
Honestly, at this point, new voice or not, the image of the Elmo character has been sullied, and forever associated with a likely sexual abuser. Sesame Street might be wise to pull the character from the show indefinitely, and maybe replace him with Abby Cadaby, who is considerably less annoying anyway.
(Source: The Daily Beast)
