Sesame Workshop asks Obama campaign to stop running Big Bird ad
President Obama’s campaign has now upset Sesame Street with an ad that uses Big Bird to mock Mitt Romney for proposing funding cuts to PBS.
The Obama for America TV ad released Tuesday uses the menacing “movie guy voice” to sarcastically link the giant yellow bird to “gluttons of greed” like admitted Ponzi scheme operator Bernie Madoff and ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay.
“Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about; it’s Sesame Street,” the ad’s narrator proclaims.
Romney declared during the first presidential debate last week that he would cut funding to PBS to help reduce the deficit, despite adding, “I like PBS, I like Big Bird.”
“Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns,” Sesame Workshop wrote in a statement on its website. “We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down.”
The Obama campaign says it is reviewing the request.
The RNC had released its own Sesame Street-themed graphic that accused Obama of focusing on frivolous issues over the economy.
“Recent Obama campaign events: 8 mentions of Big Bird,” the ad says next to an image of Sesame Street’s Count von Count. “0 mentions of Libya.”
Obama’s February 2007 speech in Springfield, Ill. when he launched his first campaign for president:
“What’s stopped us from meeting these challenges is not the absence of sound policies and sensible plans. What’s stopped us is the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics — the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.”