'Unemployed Big Bird,' Jenga, and other debate-inspired memes

Mitt Romney may have won the debate, but the big loser was Sesame Street's beloved icon. A guide to the Twitter madness Wednesday night's showdown inspired

Mitt Romney playing Jenga before the Oct. 3 debate
(Image credit: AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

About halfway through the first 2012 presidential debate, Republican challenger Mitt Romney started something: "I'm sorry, Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS," he told debate moderator Jim Lehrer, the executive editor of PBS NewsHour. "I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird. Actually I like you, too. But... I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for [it]." Almost immediately the "Twittersphere exploded" with Big Bird love, says Erika Eichelberger at Mother Jones. Between the hashtag #SaveBigBird and several new parody Big Bird Twitter accounts, Sesame Street's big yellow icon generated 17,000 tweets per minute. It wasn't the only new meme born during the debate, however. Here's a look at some of the cultural moments spawned by the Obama-Romney standoff:

1. Unemployed Big Bird

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