Much has been written in high brow academic journals (as well as less seemly and “popular” publications) on the relative merits of Kelly, Sean, Dennisha and Liz, AKA the hosts of the Sunnyside Up Show on Sprout, a PBS station aimed solely at the eight and under set (and some of their parents). The set itself is a barn or some sort of shed outside of anywhere recognizable. There is, of course, Chica, the mostly mute, ever-present and obviously perched somewhere on the downside of the asberger’s spectrum sidekick, who admittedly matches Ed McMahon for useful interjections and intellectual banter. The hosts are a ragtag gang of podunk hillbillies intricately designed to appeal to the more conservative parents hearkening back to a simpler world they never knew but fully intend to eventually impose upon those with I.Q.’s in the three-digit range – also known to them as “the elite” and “the enemy.” Within their goofball banter – and even Chica’s grating chirps – are coded messages directed at, but mostly lost on, these conservative adults. The messages matter less than the empty, drooling grins the show and select hosts inspire, however.

Kelly is the obvious leader. She’s the perfect specimen drawn up in any of a number of jokes about traveler’s hooking up with the shockingly hot farmer’s daughter. Everything about her exudes the sweetness, spunk and treachery needed to capture that essence.

They even went so far as to parade this wayward teen onto the screen knocked up like volleyball at a pig roast, adding to her vixen/victim, innocent prepubescence/sexual predator vibe that so thrills the men she was designed to appeal to. The overall effect preceded and quite possibly set in motion the otherwise inexplicable hormonal response to one Sarah Palin, the Great Wet Dream of

any number of conservative males. It has been posited that Kelly isn’t actually human, but instead some sort of perfect mix of artificial intelligence and fleshy goodness, but I don’t agree. The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank, issued a press release recently to coincide with an award they gave Kelly for being a Great Patriot. “Kelly exudes everything conservative, God-fearing Americans love about this great nation of God-fearing Americans [sic].” She’s real all right and Ms. Palin owes her a debt of gratitude.

Dennisha is the Trojan Horse of the shows producers. By including an African-American woman, any suppositions that something wasn’t right – or maybe way too right (and white) – about the show were quickly quelled. Dennisha is also beautiful and so captures the simplistic, redneck essence that she slid past the liberals only to be the true essence of double-speak, reading children’s birthday cards, while slipping in messages of prayer over medicine, small government, and more money for the richest Americans. What has remained unknown up to now is that Dennisha is actually the love child of former Bush Administration stalwart Condoleezza Rice and a one-night stand after a night of disco clubbing. Her father has never been identified, owing to the impossibly below board nature of the encounter, and the possibility that the father is famous. A few names have been put forth: David Bowie, Clarence Thomas and P.J. O’Rourke.

Sean’s presence on the show is less easily explained. Obviously gay and no-doubt a grade school dropout, Sean, well, isn’t acting. It was documented in an exceedingly well-researched  article in Rolling Stone in 2009 that Sean is kept more or less prisoner on the set where he is led from his room to the stage, where he’s been told and so believes to a Truman Show depth that this is “where life is.” Sean was born into a deeply religious and conservative southern family (his father was a Republican fundraiser in Alabama) and raised with the belt and the bible. His parents began to see the devil in Sean when he began to have his own ideas and opinions (and realizations – one of which was that he was a young gay man) and so quickly lobotomized him, which is to what he owes his special grin. That he is gay has never been admitted by his handlers or the producers of the show, as they are known to believe that if you admit that people are gay, you might “go gay” yourself, a common misperception in conservative circles, which is why there are so many tight-lipped, well-coiffed effeminate “dads” with sparkling shoes (and terrifically unfulfilled wives) in the pews of mega-churches across this great land of ours.

Liz is the latest Sunnyside Up Show host to join the cast and so less good academic research has been conducted on her. She brings much of the same farmer’s daughter sensuality that Kelly has; the same doofus, happy demeanor of Sean and Dennisha’s uncanny ability to couch messages about Tea Party ideas and gun shop locations within children’s songs, but there’s also something else.

Liz, I put forth, is acting as a double-agent, who used all of her god-given attributes to convince the producers to put her on the show (see photo, which shows Liz coming on to one of the producers prior to being asked to join the cast). Cryptographers have shown through a series of really undeniable coded strings that Liz is actually speaking a totally different language that although they’ve recognized, they’ve been up to now unable to crack.

The Sunnyside Up Show and the four hosts have been dissected ad nauseum. There have been papers and articles and books, videos, movies, reality shows and documentaries. None, I believe, have so captured the truth and essence of this American original, this political juggernaut, this morning madness than the preceding paragraphs. I’ve spent years on their trail. I love them and hate them.

Speaking of love, now it’s on to Nina and the Goodnight Show. Methinks she’s possibly a central American guerilla working to supplant democracy with communism, or she’s an angel from heaven, with a Star that just better back off!