Jeannie DeAngelis - Mitt Pronounces Big Bird a Dead Canary

Originally posted at American Thinker

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Barely blinking once throughout the entire firstpresidential debate, moderator and timid minute-counter Jim Lehrer should have taken pointers from PBS colleague Count von Count from Sesame Street, because Mitt Romney ran roughshod over Jim and in the process flattened Big Bird, too. Mitt informed a stunned Lehrer: “I’m sorry, Jim — I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. I actually like you, too. But I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

That’s right — Mitt Romney actually had the audacity to suggest that in addition to Sesame Street, fiscal sanity may require eliminating federal funding for vital PBS shows such as Beeswax, Islam: Empire of Faith, Who’s Dancin’ Now?, and Nerds 2.0.1.

In response to the controversy surrounding Seamus’ dad dissing Big Bird, Sean Higgins from the Washington Examiner quelled national anxiety when he reported that “Sesame Street generated $134 million in revenue last year; will be unharmed if it loses the $1.5 million currently provided by the federal government.”

Sesame Workshop’s Sherrie Westin even chimed in, admitting that “quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to [trot] out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird — that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.”

Nonetheless, bird-loving Barack is sure that Big Bird has provided the “wedge issue” he’s been waiting for. So much so that in an attempt to regain momentum, the president is attempting to pluck out Mitt Romney’s post-debate plumage in hopes of lining his own political nest with Big Bird’s feathers.

Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki supports the effort. Ms. Psaki maintains that “[t]here’s been a strong grassroots outcry over the attacks” — not on Bengazi, but on Big Bird.

Listening to Jen, one would think that “mothers across the country” couldn’t care less about issues that negatively impact their children’s futures and are more concerned that Big Bird be able to continue living in the large nest behind the 123 Sesame Street brownstone at taxpayers’ expense.

With advisers like Jen Psaki, the president may decide it’s good politics to roller-skate into the next debate in a giant Big Bird costume to drive home the point that, contrary to recent foreign policy blunders, he’s neither a “chicken” nor a “bird on the run,” and that PBS funding is one of his top priorities.

After all, how dare Mitt Romney suggest that funding Sesame Street might not be worth the United States being indefinitely indebted to Communist China? In fact, a good foreign policy argument might include Barack Obama pointing out that Mitt Romney is so anti-Big Bird that he didn’t even realize that in 1983, the oversized canary traveled extensively in the People’s Republic of China in search of Feng Huang, the Phoenix bird.

Adding to the outcry and despite her husband regularly stomping all over the endangered American bald eagle, Michelle Obama did not control herself when she recently took “a rare dig at Romney” for bullying Big Bird. After all, not only do the first lady and Big Bird have a longstanding relationship, but the Sesame Street star believes that he and Michelle may even share a familial connection.

In 2009, when Mrs. Obama preached planting and eating fresh veggies to the kiddies on Sesame Street, Aloysius Snuffleupagus’s flightless best friend walked in for a guest appearance. The huge, yellow, unicycle-riding mutant bird, who under different circumstances would pounce on the seeds the first lady was sowing, suggested that based on their mutual tall stature, he and Michelle may have originated from the same genetic pool.

Family is family, which may be why, while campaigning at Loudoun County Fairgrounds in Virginia, Michelle Obama directly addressed Big Bird supporters, saying, “[W]e believe in keeping our priorities straight.” Ahem. Then, verbally dyslexic Michelle Obama also attempted to convince the crowd that “We all know good and well that cutting Sesame Street is no way to balance the budget [and] that shortchanging our kids is not how we tackle our deficit.”

Sorry, but hearing a partial-birth abortion/free-contraceptives/government-funded abortion activist like Michelle Obama preach about “keeping our priorities straight” and “shortchanging our kids” seems, at best, a tad insincere.

Nonetheless, in some circles, if Sesame Street toddlers do manage to make it out of the womb alive, watching the Cookie Monster eat cookies while trying to gag down oven-fried asparagus spears must be well worth becoming further obligated to the largest foreign owner of our national debt.

In the end, all the attention Michelle and Barack are giving Big Bird may have symbolic meaning far beyond the PBS funding controversy. In the past, mine workers would take caged canaries down into the dark tunnels with them to detect deadly gas. If methane or carbon monoxide leaked into the mineshaft, the canary would stop singing, keel over in the cage, and, in the process, save lives by warning miners to rush to the surface.

Mitt Romney’s suggestion to kill federal funding for the big canary on Sesame Street may be the first step toward bringing the American economy out of the depths of despair for a long-overdue breath of fresh air.

Jeannie DeAngelis

Jeannie DeAngelis writes almost exclusively for American Thinker and has been published on the conservative website Pajamas Media, as well as hosting a blog. See Jeannie's Blog

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