Elmo's used in these cases specifically because he's around the target age of the audience... 3 1/2. Kids will always listen to a peer and will always watch shows or read books about kids their own age (or around their own age). That's why so many kids cartoons are about kids doing something besides sitting around watching stuff. That's why shows like Recess and Codename KND are popular and ran for quite a while.It's the same way that Barney allegedly encourages kids to use their imaginations, as long as their imagination lets them see the same overgrown prehistoric eunuch following the same bad choreography and droning the same platitudes as all the other kids 'imagine'. Now Elmo's noble cause is to help kids understand the issues that affect them... from the point of view of the perpetrators of these issues. I have never seen any of the specials, since they don't air here in Australia, but from the bits that I've heard I can only wonder if they are aimed at the children whose innocence needs to be cryogenically frozen or the adults who'll spoonfeed them the corporate propaganda.
But I digress. I wish someone ELSE but SW would do this sort of thing for kids. Seems they have the biggest burden to break crummy reality to children while Dora runs around a flat, ugly cartoon jungle helping characters look for green triangles for 30 minutes.