The template for a celebrity Sesame Street appearance is fairly well-established: show up, sing a song, and pretend all your best friends are made of felt. It's a tradition songstress Katy Perry violated Monday when she showed up in a low-cut lime green dress to sing "Hot 'N Cold" with a musically inclined puppet for the show's New Year's Eve special. After initially releasing a clip of the appearance online, the show's producers backtracked today amid parental outrage, confirming to US Weekly that the performance will not air.

It seems like a fairly harsh reaction. For one thing, the clip remains widely available on YouTube. Plus, as New York Magazine's Kyle Buchanan points out, "her scene partner Elmo wasn't wearing anything at all."

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Ray Gustini