Sesame Workshop to Obama: Take Big Bird ad down Brian Montopoli, Steve Chaggaris / CBS News/ October 9, 2012, 12:38 PM Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, is requesting that the Obama campaign take down a new ad portraying Mitt Romney as more concerned with Big Bird than Wall Street criminals. "Sesame Workshop is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization and we do not endorse candidates or participate in political campaigns," the group said. We have approved no campaign ads, and as is our general practice, have requested that the ad be taken down. The ad grew out of a comment by Romney in the presidential debate in which the Republican presidential candidate said that while he likes Big Bird, he wants to cut off the small government subsidy for public broadcasting. It begins with a narrator invoking convicted "gluttons of greed" such as Bernie Madoff and Kenneth Lay before cheekily saying only "one man has the guts" to speak the name of "evil genius who towered over" them: Big Bird. Romney spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg responded to the ad, telling CBS News in an email: "Four years ago, President Obama said that if you don't have a record to run on, 'you make a big election about small things.' With 23 million people struggling for work, incomes falling, and gas prices soaring, Americans deserve more from their president. The Obama campaign tells CBS News that the ad will run on national cable - not specifically in any battleground states - and would not indicate how much they're spending on the ad buy.