During last night's presidential debate, GOP candidate Mitt Romney declared hypothetical war on PBS, saying that he would cut funding for the network in order to reduce the nation's deficit:

I’m going to stop the subsidy to PBS...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.

The internet went apeshit over the suggestion, and among those outraged is LeVar Burton, former host of PBS' hugely popular kids program, "Reading Rainbow." Burton told TMZ that he simply couldn't stay silent on the matter:

"I am personally outraged that any serious contender for the White House would target as part of his campaign the children of America in this fashion...Educators across the country, as well as millions of children and adults know that the programming on PBS has been responsible for significant improvements in education, literacy, math, science and life skills for generations of our children."

Burton is no stranger to leveraging his fame — he was recently pulled over for not yielding to a pedestrian in a crosswalk but was let out of a ticket, possibly in no small part because he was wearing a "Reading Rainbow" t-shirt at the time.