{"id":1004,"date":"2012-10-10T22:02:50","date_gmt":"2012-10-11T04:02:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=1004"},"modified":"2012-10-10T22:02:50","modified_gmt":"2012-10-11T04:02:50","slug":"ruffling-feathers-at-pbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/ruffling-feathers-at-pbs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ruffling Feathers at PBS"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
SNL invited Big Bird to the set of Weekend Update.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

For a generation raised on Sesame Street, Big Bird is the poster child for all that is right and good about children’s television. A creation of puppeteer Kermit Love, Big Bird was originally designed to be played by Jim Henson. While that never quite worked out, according to Wikipedia Big Bird has been “officially performed by Caroll Spinney since 1969.” It is worth noting that Spinney is paid more than $300,000 annually for the role, according to the Sesame Workshops forms filed for 2010 tax year (the Atlantic<\/a>).<\/p>\n

So why are we talking about Big Bird? Because in the first 2012 Presidential Debate, which aired Oct 3, Mitt Romney said that in order to reduce the federal budget deficit he would makes cuts to certain domestic programs. Here’s the quote:<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m sorry, Jim [Lehrer, moderator of the debate]. I\u2019m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I\u2019m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you too. But I\u2019m not going to \u2014 I\u2019m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In response, the Obama campaign released this ad accusing Romney of going after Sesame Street while giving Wall Street a pass…<\/p>\n

[youtube=http:\/\/youtu.be\/bZxs09eV-Vc]<\/p>\n

According to an article in the WSJ<\/a>, Sesame Workshop would prefer to avoid being politicized by either candidate and has requested that the Obama campaign pull the ad.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have approved no campaign ads and, as is our general practice, have requested that both campaigns remove Sesame Street characters and trademarks from their campaign materials,\u201d said Sesame Workshop, a nonprofit educational organization that produces and owns the show, in a statement.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What do you think about Big Bird, funding for PBS, and politicizing of both for the sake of political gain?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For a generation raised on Sesame Street, Big Bird is the poster child for all that is right and good about children’s television. A creation of puppeteer Kermit Love, Big Bird was originally designed to be played by Jim Henson. While that never quite worked out, according to Wikipedia Big Bird has been “officially performed … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Ruffling Feathers at PBS”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,18,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-advertising","category-politics","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1004"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1004\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}