I take Romney at his word that he likes Big Bird. What he does not like however is free thought, creativity and individuality, education, public education and corporate free interests. PBS is everything that Mitt Romney is not. There are no 'happy little trees' in his word. Either a tree is the right height, or it is not.
One of PBS's Big Birds Bob Ross, was not the son of a Governor so he never had the hard, up-by-the-bootstraps upbringing of Romney.
Ross enlisted in the U.S. Air Force at age 18[2] after graduating from Elizabeth Forward High School in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania and was living in Florida early in his military career when the Air Force transferred him to Eielson AFB (in Alaska), where he first saw the snow and mountains that later became recurring themes in his artwork; he developed his quick-painting technique in order to be able to create art for sale in brief daily work breaks Having held military positions that required him to be, in his own words, "mean" and "tough", "the guy who makes you scrub the latrine, the guy who makes you make your bed, the guy who screams at you for being late to work", Ross decided that if he ever moved on from the military, "it wasn't going to be that way any more", "vowing never to scream again
Does Mitt look like a man who will never scream again? Yeah, I didn't think so either. Ross was quite the businessman as well. However he was not selfish:
Ross later founded his own successful line of art supplies and how-to books, and also offered painting classes taught by instructors trained in the "Bob Ross method", building a $15 million business.[2] In a 1990 interview, Ross mentioned that all his paintings were donated free of charge to PBS stations and that his earnings came instead from sales of his 20 books and 100 videotapes .
Another Big Bird, Fred Rogers was an ordained Minister who saw potential in television, and also great evil.
"I went into television because I hated it so, and I thought there's some way of using this fabulous instrument to nurture those who would watch and listen.
Rogers decided that commercial television's reliance on advertisement and merchandising undermined its ability to educate or enrich young audiences, so he quit NBC.
This is as Anti-Romney of a concept as you can get. Fred Rogers had earnest, honest conversations with us about feelings, and facts, and conservatives hate him for it. To the Romney Republicans we all are not unique individuals who can succeed by being who we are, because somebody actually has to make those fancy new gadgets.
Now on to the 95 percent.
In 2001 there were over 120 million viewers of various international versions of Sesame Street, and by the show's 40th anniversary in 2009, it was broadcast in more than 140 countries.
By its 40th anniversary in 2009, Sesame Street was the fifteenth-highest rated children's television show in the United States. A 1996 survey found that 95% of all American preschoolers had watched the show by the time they were three years old.
95% of kids in 1996 who were pre-school age were watching the socialist Sesame Street. Kids who are now able to register to vote!
Their goal was to create a children's television show that would "master the addictive qualities of television and do something good with them",
Again, the very anti-thesis of the Republican Party. Who the F spends their times doing good deeds and educating children instead of bombarding them with advertisement?
They focused on cognitive goals, while addressing affective goals indirectly, in the belief that doing so would increase children's self-esteem and feelings of competency. One of their primary goals was preparing very young children for school, especially children from low-income families,using modeling, repetition,and humor to fulfill these goals
No wonder it is the sole budget item singled out by Romney. Educating poor people? That's so European.
The success of Sesame Street also allowed Henson to stop producing commercials. He later remembered that "it was a pleasure to get out of that world
So on one hand we have a tall, bright character who can roller skate, ice skate, dance, sing, write poetry, and enjoys drawing hearts in the sand but despite this wide array of talents, he is prone to frequent misunderstandings, on one occasion even singing the alphabet as one big long word. And on the other... we have a tall-yellow cartoon bird who believes in teaching values to all children. And that my friends... is an easy choice.