The first presidential debate of the 2012 campaign had a lot
of grist for policy wonks and fact checkers, and the country got to see Mitt
Romney go into more detail about is economic plans. But on Twitter, the mood
was more light-hearted. One of the big topics was Big Bird, in the wake of
Romney's "I like Big Bird" line and his promise to remove PBS
subsidies. And that produced some great work from the Twitterverse's comedians.
Parody accounts started springing up. @firedbigbird hit
27,400 followers by Thursday morning and @BIGBIRD hit 20,000.
Some highlights:
Big Bird@FiredBigBird 47 percent of Chic-Fil-A chickens think theyre victims. I will never convince them to take personal responsibility
Big Bird@BlGBlRD I better go find a safe place to hide before Mitt Romney chops me up into little
pieces and sells me off to create jobs in China.
child who grew up with me is going to bed tonight with their middle finger
pointing towards Cayman Islands. #debates
Big Bird @FiredBigBird Somewhere
Paul Ryan is kicking over trash cans in hopes of smoking out Oscar the Grouch
Big Bird@FiredBigBird Mitt Romney will end Burt and Ernie's right to a civil union
@FiredBigBird was eventually suspended. It isn't clear why.
In support of Big Bird, was Neil DeGrasse Tyson,
astrophysicist and director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York.
Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson Cutting
PBS support (0.012 percent of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like
deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive
Meanwhile Big
Bird memes proliferated, some less family-friendly than others. It's likely that Mitt Romney won't be getting much support from Sesame Street's district.
Aside from Big Bird, CNN has it's own list of the funniest
tweets of the night, and MSN had its own
list. At the top of each of them:
Kristi Harrison – I have to admit they're both
pretty handsome. I'm waiting for the swimsuit competition to decide. #debates
And from MSN's list:
Todd Barry@toddbarry I hope you guys appreciate all the dumb comedians who are making this debate more
Does this mean Big Bird is the new third rail of American politics?
Image: Quickmeme.com
