Leave PBS alone

Picking on a Sesame Street character indicates an all-time low for the 2013 presidential race.

Following a long-winded spiel during Wednesday night's debate about creating more jobs for America, Mitt Romney dropped a bombshell.

"I'm sorry, Jim, I'm gonna stop the subsidy to PBS," Romney told debate moderator Jim Lehrer, News Hour anchor. "I'm gonna stop other things. I like PBS, I like Big Bird, I actually like you too."

Americans took notice of the backhanded comment, as did Raygun, a snarky Des Moines-based T-shirt maker. Word on the street is Raygun plans to screen print a "PBS: costing America more than two wars, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and oil subsidies" tee.

According to Google Analytics, "PBS" was the number one search term the following day, with well over 100,000 hits from U.S. users alone, likely a portion of the 77 million Americans who watched Sesame Street during their preschool years.

PBS' parent organization, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, receives a major chunk of change every year from the federal government---$444 million. But it is also important to point out that PBS also relies heavily upon other sources for funding, including viewers, member stations, foundations and corporations to provide for its quality educational commercial-free programming.

Despite whoever is in the White House, Sesame Street will continue on, Sesame Workshop officials have said.

"Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS," Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Sesame Workshop told CNN. "So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we're going to kill Big Bird - that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here."

With more important issues on the docket, why spend valuable debate time bashing Sesame Street, Mr. Rodgers and Bob "Happy Trees" Ross?

* Ashley Miller is a member of the Pilot news staff. Reach the columnist at amiller@stormlakepilottribune.com