Beware of Men Bearing Poppets!

When I was a kid the puppets were quite popular on television. Burr Tillstrom's Kukla, Fran and Ollie may have been the first. I loved the "Howdy Doody Show."  

The Jack Paar show and Walter Cronkite's 1954 CBS "The Morning Show" had Bil Baird's company of singing and dancing puppets including Charlemane the Lion  interviewing people and talking with the hosts. (This stuck in Cronkite's craw and he quickly escaped the show to become CBS' legendary evening news anchor.) 

Shari Lewis

As Shari Lewis' show became popular I was losing interest in puppets but I found Shari very sexy. Shari Lewis was more than a puppeteer; she wrote the Star Trek episode "The Lights of Zetar." 

You don't see many puppets on TV these days. Mostly the art lives on in live shows. I remember taking my daughter to a few back in the early eighties and I felt rather creeped out by the puppet experience. I seem to recall my daughter was too. In fact, when I took her to Disneyworld when she was 6 or 7 she told me she felt very uncomfortable there. 

Disney's It's a Small World

Full Moon's Puppet Master movies show us that in popular culture puppets have become more scary than anything else. 

From Full Moon's Puppet Master II

Now we see another example of someone whose public religiosity cloaks a private life of debauched evil. Ronald William Brown, 57, of Largo, Florida is a public Christian and a  puppeteer who entertained the little ones during what must be the extremely boring services at Gulf Coast Church. He planned with an internet buddy comrade in crime, Michael Arnett,  to abduct and eat after roasting  a two year old girl.  
Puppets are often used as tools by black magicians, consciously or not.  If the FBI just checked out all the Christian puppeteers in the country they might stop a few crimes. It is interesting that it was Homeland Security that got this guy. At this link you can watch Ronnie in action. 

Update: Puppeteer Ronald Brown was convicted July 30, 2013