PBS supporters are planning a "Million Muppet March" at Washington DC's National Mall on Nov. 3 to defend government funding for the network, Reuters reports. Organizers aren't sure yet how many will actually attend, but "it does seem like we might get close to the biggest ever assemblage of puppets in one place, and probably the most ever puppets marching on Washington," says one. The title, which was dreamed up by two men separately after Mitt Romney's comments about PBS and Big Bird at the first presidential debate, is a play off 1995's "Million Man March" for civil rights, also held at the National Mall.
Los Angeles animation executive Michael Bellavia, 43, bought www.millionmuppetmarch.com while watching the debate, then later discovered that Idaho university student Chris Mecham, 46, had launched a Facebook page with the same name. Shortly after the debate ended, they were already on the phone planning the protest. "Romney was using Muppets as a rhetorical device to talk about getting rid of public broadcasting, which is really so much bigger than Sesame Street," Mecham says. "While he was still talking I was thinking of ways I could express my frustration at that argument." (More Muppets stories.)
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