Sesame Street Asks Obama To Take Down Ad Featuring Big Bird
In a desperate attempt to salvage something from what was a god-awful debate for the President, the Obama campaign began running this ad featuring Big Bird which rips Romney for calling for an end to subsidies for public broadcasting:
Since the debate, the President has talked about Big Bird and Elmo more than a dozen times while mentioning neither Libya nor the economy even once.
Sesame Street, though, is asking Obama to stop running the ad:
Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.
Sesame Street is a hugely popular children’s brand, and you can’t blame them for not wanting to be viewed as siding with one political candidate over the other.
And speaking of hugely popular, what Romney is calling for is an end to subsidies for an enterprise that makes tens of millions of dollars annually from merchandise sales alone. Sesame Street doesn’t need our subsidies. In fact, most public broadcasting could probably survive without out subsidies, and the public broadcasting programming that couldn’t survive without subsidies, you have to wonder why the taxpayers should be on the hook for programming so unpopular most people won’t watch it?
In a nation where we’re running a $1 trillion annual budget deficit, how can we justify subsidizing things that don’t need subsidies? Granted, public broadcasting is a small part of the national budget, but it’s still a place to start.
Tags: Barack Obama, big bird, election 2012, mitt romney, sesame street
