“My ideas evolved from long hours in local bars, talking, talking,
talking, always about morality. People were always asking ‘Who do you
think you are, Socrates?’ They said it with contempt, but I would smile
and say, ‘Thank you.'” – Tim CooneyThe television show Sesame Street recently celebrated its
40th anniversary. To commemorate the occasion there have been a host of
events, including the publication of several books. A review of one of
them, Street Gang: The Complete History of Sesame Street by
Michael Davis, caught my eye when I saw a mention in it of the late
Timothy J. Cooney, ex-husband of Joan Ganz Cooney, the creator of Sesame
Street. Tim was a fascinating person in his own right, and I
immediately bought the book to see what it had to say about him, for I
had gotten to know Tim in the last decade of his life, well after his
marriage had ended.I first met Tim a few years after the publication of his book Telling
Right from Wrong (Prometheus, 1985). It had generated a great deal
of publicity, not primarily because of its content (it’s an extended
argument as to the importance of differentiating matters of opinion from
matters of fact) but because of the controversy over how the book came
to be published. Cooney had held governmental jobs as a speech writer
and as a member of the administration of New York mayor John Lindsay. He
and Joan Ganz had been very active in causes connected with President
Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society’, and one of Tim’s main intellectual
concerns was to understand the relationship between theory and practice.
How to Tell Right from Wrong, as our opening quote makes
clear, came about after extended late-night Socratic barroom dialogues
and discussions with assorted friends, social activists, and general
members of society. An avid reader of philosophers both historic and
contemporary, Cooney felt a need to develop an argument against ethical
relativism which would have as its highest concern a defense against
political thinking and practices which could ultimately lead to the
destruction of humanity.
