"Million Puppet March" Draws Hundreds to Protest Public TV Cuts

Shouting "Elmo! We won't go," hundreds of protesters marched in Washington on Saturday for the Million Puppet March, protesting calls to zero out federal funding for PBS and other public broadcasting entitites.

The event was billed as non-partisan, but it was inspired by Romney's pledge in the first presidential debate to cut federal funding for public TV, saying that the government could not afford it at a time when it is borrowing from China to make up for record budget deficits.

The protest --- which some estimates said drew as many as 1,000 people --- started at Lincoln Park and went to the reflecting pool at the U.S. Capitol. It was the brainchild of Chris Mecham, an Idaho political science major at Boise State University, and Michael Bellavia, a Los Angeles producer and president of Animax, an animation and interactive production studio.