--- title: "Lamb Chop, Shari Lewis’s sock puppet, testified to Congress in 1993 and is now an honorary Marine general" url: https://badiyaa.com/lamb-chop-shari-lewis-congress-testimony/ published: 2026-11-13T10:45:00+00:00 modified: 2026-11-13T10:45:00+00:00 section: History publisher: Badiyaa --- # Lamb Chop, Shari Lewis’s sock puppet, testified to Congress in 1993 and is now an honorary Marine general Lamb Chop, Shari Lewis's sheep puppet, gave her own statement at a 1993 House hearing on children's TV and now holds an honorary Marine general rank. In 1993 a sock puppet asked a committee of the US House of Representatives whether she was speaking on her own time. The chairman told her she was. Lamb Chop, the sheep Shari Lewis had been performing since 1956, then delivered her own statement, and it is still printed in the Congressional Record. Three decades later the same puppet holds an honorary rank few humans reach: three-star general in the Marines. ## The hearing where Lamb Chop got the floor The occasion was an oversight hearing on how broadcasters were obeying the Children’s Television Act of 1990, a law that required stations to serve young viewers’ educational needs. Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts chaired it. When Lewis died in 1998, he placed both her closing words and the puppet’s full remarks in the [Congressional Record of August 4, 1998](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1998-08-04/html/CREC-1998-08-04-pt1-PgE1544-2.htm), noting that Lewis testified “and Lamb Chop provided a separate statement.” Lewis’s own pitch was serious. She argued that if every broadcaster had to air a minimum amount of educational programming, “perhaps there would be a race for quality, just as there now is a race for market share.” Then she staged an interruption. “I wanted to end here. Unfortunately, Lamb Chop has insisted on being heard today,” Lewis told the panel, adding that her mother thought it was “not dignified.” The transcript reads like a nightclub routine filed as government testimony. Lamb Chop opened with a procedural question: “Mr. Chairman, I would like to know, am I on my own time, or do I get only part of Shari’s?” Markey answered: “You get your own time, Lamb Chop.” After telling Lewis to go away, and hearing that she could not talk at all without her, the puppet made her case: “Mr. Chairman, I have been entertaining children for 35 years, which is a long time in the life of a 6 year old.” She asked the adults in the room for “the best that you grown-ups have to offer,” promising that children would give “the good stuff back.” The exchange closed with a joke built into the format. “Lamb Chop, I couldn’t have said that better myself,” Lewis said. “I know,” the puppet replied. ## From Captain Kangaroo to Capitol Hill The timing mattered. Lewis had just returned to public television with *Lamb Chop’s Play-Along*, which premiered on PBS on September 10, 1992, and went on to win an Emmy five years running. Her testimony came from someone with a show on the air, not a nostalgia act. A short timeline of the puppet’s career puts the hearing in context: - **March 1956:** Lamb Chop debuts during Lewis’s guest spot on *Captain Kangaroo*. - **1960 to 1963:** NBC carries *The Shari Lewis Show*, which replaced *The Howdy Doody Show*. - **1992:** *Lamb Chop’s Play-Along* starts on PBS. - **1993:** Lamb Chop addresses the House oversight hearing. - **1998:** Lewis dies at 65; Markey reads the puppet’s testimony into the record. - **2000:** Lewis’s daughter, Mallory Lewis, begins performing the character. By that count, the “35 years” Lamb Chop claimed in 1993 was close to exact: 37 years had passed since her 1956 debut. ## The general nobody salutes Mallory Lewis, who wrote for her mother’s later shows, took over the puppet two years after Shari’s death. The pair now perform mainly for US military audiences, including on Navy ships, and Lamb Chop carries the honorary rank of three-star general in the Marines. Mallory still owns the live performing rights, while the screen rights passed through Golden Books and Classic Media to DreamWorks Classics, now part of NBCUniversal. A whole generation of dogs knows the character from a different angle. A licensed Lamb Chop chew toy launched in 2010 and by 2025 was outselling SpongeBob and Simba toys at PetSmart, even though Mallory Lewis earns no royalties from it. For more on the public television era that made Lamb Chop’s testimony possible, read how [Sesame Street premiered on November 10, 1969, after a dinner party and $8 million in grants](https://badiyaa.com/sesame-street-premiere-november-10-1969-origin/), and how the same show [survived near-collapse three times before moving to Netflix](https://badiyaa.com/sesame-street-business-comeback-netflix/). ## Further reading - [Wikipedia: Lamb Chop (puppet)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamb_Chop_(puppet)) - [Wikipedia: Shari Lewis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shari_Lewis) - [Congressional Record, August 4, 1998, page E1544](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CREC-1998-08-04/html/CREC-1998-08-04-pt1-PgE1544-2.htm) *Image: U.S. Navy, Public domain via Wikimedia Commons* *This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by our Editorial Desk. [How we work](https://badiyaa.com/editorial-policy/).*