First Big Bird, and now this! What does Mitt Romney have against kids? Hunter mentioned it Monday night in The Chronicles of Mitt: Oct 8, 2012: On advice of staff, I have declined to participate further in something called the Nickelodeon "Kids Pick The President" special. Apparently I had been expected to answer questions posed to me by small children, but after promising to fire the large television bird my staff judged that too many of the questions from that demographic would likely be hostile.
Nickelodeon's "Kids Pick The President" is a tradition that has been going on since 1996. The kids have correctly voted for the ultimate winner of the presidential race five out of six times. The only year they got it wrong was 2004, when the kids selected John Kerry and neither candidate agreed to participate. Nick News host and executive producer Linda Ellerbee explained.
Former president George W. Bush “was all over doing this in 2000,” Ellerbee noted. “In 2004, John Kerry turned us down, and we informed the Bush campaign — as we informed the Obama campaign about Romney — and Bush said, ‘If Kerry is not doing it, I’m not gonna do it.’ That’s the only time someone has turned us down.”
Romney snubs Nick’s ‘Kids’
Romney's campaign said that they
couldn't find the 30 minutes needed to film the answers to videotaped questions from kids around the country who want to learn about government and participate in the election. Is it a really a matter of time constraints or did Hunter guess the reason in
his diary?
I am not, however, willing to risk taking questions from young children in public. There are too many dangers involved. The man wants to be president of the United States but he can't spare 30 minutes for children.
“We began communicating with the [Romney] campaign on April 30 and they were very encouraging, and now, six months later, it’s: ‘Sorry, we couldn’t find time, the governor is just too busy’ — and has been too busy for the past six months,” Ellerbee told the TV Column.
“By answering kids’ questions directly, candidates show respect for kids,” Ellerbee said in Nickelodeon’s news release about the special, as though she meant it to sting.
“We are disappointed that Mitt Romney wouldn’t take the time to answer the questions, but are thrilled that President Obama participated in the special.”
Romney snubs Nick’s ‘Kids’
The good news for the kids is that President Obama did sit down at the White House on September 19 and filmed his answers to questions from kids all over the country about issues like gun control, jobs, illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, outsourcing, bullying and obesity.
He also revealed his most embarrassing moment. "Running into the wall is par for the course for me," Obama told "Nick News." "I'm running into doors and desks all the time."
"Nick News," now in its 21st year, has won nine Emmy awards and is the longest-running kids' news show on U.S. television. It has tackled subjects ranging from alcoholism to autism, cancer and having parents returning from war.
No Romney time for kids as "Nick News" picks president
Deputy National Press Secretary Adam Fetcher
told TMZ, "It's no surprise Romney decided to play hookey. Kids demand details, and I'm sure they want some answers on why Romney could increase their class sizes, eliminate their teacher's jobs, raise taxes on their families and slash funding for Big Bird.
The dog ate my homework just doesn't cut it when you're running for President."
The program will air on October 15, and then the kids will have one week to go to the website to vote for their choice for president. If you have kids or grandchildren, you might want to get them involved in this educational opportunity, even if Mitt Romney won't be participating. Check your local listings for times.
Meanwhile, Big Bird continues to be part of the national discussion. The Obama campaign released a controversial Big Bird ad on Tuesday focusing on the fact that the one budget cut Romney has admitted he would make was funding for PBS. As President Obama has been saying on the campaign trail, Romney is willing to take on Sesame Street but not Wall Street.
There was quite a bit of controversy when the ad was released. According to The New York Times.
The creators of “Sesame Street” had asked Mr. Obama to leave Big Bird out of it. And even some Democrats said the ad, suggesting that Mr. Romney would be tougher on “Sesame Street” than on Wall Street, was not the salve that nervous party activists and volunteers were looking for.
(snip)
Aides said the spot was to run only on cable, including comedy programs, and was meant to direct the focus to the budget priories of Mr. Romney, who criticized Mr. Obama for talking about “saving Big Bird” instead of “saving good jobs.”
“The idea was to provoke a discussion and create a little viral activity, and we’ve done that,” said David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist.
Obama Campaign Tells Supporters: Steady On
The ad did accomplish both the discussion and the viral activity. In one day it had been viewed more than 1.6 million times. Unfortunately, as I learned when I
posted the ad in a diary yesterday, a lot of people objected to the ad because the Obama campaign did not obtain permission to use images of Big Bird from
Sesame Street.
The Christian Science Monitor explored the controversy over the ad, "Why was this controversial? Big Bird didn’t like it, for one thing."
“We as a nonprofit organization, we are non-political.... Our goal is to reach every child in America. We don’t contaminate that with anything,” Mr. [Sesame Workshop CEO Melvin] Ming said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Second, conservatives derided the ad as small-bore. The Obama campaign isn’t responding to the larger points Romney made in last week’s debate, writes Mark Hemingway Wednesday in The Weekly Standard. Instead it’s focused on empty ephemera, according to Hemingway.
“As strategic miscalculations go, the ad is pretty devastating,” he writes.
Obama Big Bird ad: a mistake, or shrewd?
Did the Obama campaign use the intellectual property of
Sesame Street without permission or has Big Bird become part of the public domain? Was
hannah on to something? Did
all these websites get prior approval to use Big Bird's image or will Sesame Street be sending out hundreds of cease and desist letters?
I'm Barack Obama and I approved this message.
Narrator: Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski. Criminals. Gluttons of greed. And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.
Different video clips of Mitt Romney saying: Big Bird. Big Bird. Big Bird.
Big Bird: It's me. Big Bird.
Narrator: Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy. Mitt Romney knows it's not Wall Street you have to worry about; it's Sesame Street.
Mitt Romney: I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS.
On Screen: Video of Big Bird sitting in a nest.
Narrator: Mitt Romney. Taking on our enemies no matter where they nest.