Big Bird featured in new Obama ad

The Obama campaign is taking silly season in politics to a whole new level in a television ad released on Tuesday featuring the star of last Wednesday’s debate: Big Bird.

“Bernie Madoff. Ken Lay. Dennis Kozlowski. Criminals. Gluttons of greed,” a grimacing narrator says. “And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.”

“Big Bird,” Mitt Romney is shown saying three separate times.

“Big. Yellow. A menace to our economy,” the ad continues. “Mitt Romney knows it’s not Wall Street you have to worry about, it’s Sesame Street. … Mitt Romney. Taking on our enemies, no matter where they nest.”

The Obama campaign has criticized Romney for his comments during the first presidential debate, where he promised to end subsidies to fund the Public Broadcasting Service.

“I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS,” he said. “I’m going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. … But I’m not going to -- I’m not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it.”

Romney has repeated this line several times on the campaign trail. But following Wednesday’s comments, the Obama campaign and the Democratic National Committee have put out several online videos and photos having some fun with the comments.

“Who’s next?" Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki asked on Friday. "Maybe Elmo.”