'Sesame Street' company asks Obama campaign to take down Big Bird ad

Sesame Workshop, the company that owns the rights to "Sesame Street" and its characters, has asked the Obama campaign to take down its recent campaign ad featuring the character Big Bird.

The company has released a statement that said, "Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down."

The Big Bird kerfuffle revolves around remarks that Republican presidential candidate former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) made during the first debate of the 2012 election cycle, in which he said he would pull funding from PBS in order to cut the deficit.

“I’m sorry Jim, I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS," he said to debate moderator Jim Leher, host of PBS's "News Hour." "I like PBS, I actually love Big Bird. I like you too, but I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for.”

According to the Washington Post, "PBS receives a portion of its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which receives an annual appropriation from Congress. In 2012, CPB received $445 million in federal funding. PBS said in a news release after last week’s presidential debate that public broadcasting receives about one one-hundredth of 1 percent of the federal budget."