Mitt Romney has more than Obama to worry about.
The presidential candidate may have inadvertently created a new foe during last night’s debate. It wasn’t until Romney made some remarks which referenced Sesame Street character Big Bird. After that, Twitter launched into a “defend Big Bird” campaign.
“I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” Romney said. “I like PBS. I like Big Bird. I like you, too.” He was talking to moderator Jim Lehrer, who is employed by PBS. He also recently told Fortune Magazine: “Some of these things, like those endowment efforts and PBS I very much appreciate and like what they do in many cases, but I just think they have to stand on their own rather than receiving money borrowed from other countries, as our government does on their behalf.”
Fans of PBS and Sesame Street wasted no time in sticking up for their “little guys.” The amount of support they received was overwhelming to say the least. Twitter’s blog even released a statement.
Of course, the evening’s real breakout star was a certain tall yellow Muppet. There were more than a quarter million Tweets mentioning Big Bird, following Governor Romney’s statement that he wants to cut Federal funding for PBS, the Muppet characters’ TV channel, even despite his stated fondness for the Sesame Street character. Ardent supporters of Big Bird (and public broadcasting) took to Twitter to create parody accounts such as @SadBigBird, @BigBirdRomney and @FiredBigBird.
Crazy or what?