After debunking a false meme posted by a candidate for the Florida House of Representatives earlier this week, I was asked why I didn't do the same thing for conservative memes. To be honest with you, I thought that would be a one time deal – but since the Tea Party and conservatives offer up so much easy material, perhaps it’s time we start running a weekly column addressing the dumbest conservative memes circulating on social media.
To be fair, there’s some pretty dumb or false ones on the left as well, and we will address those as necessary. But it seems that when it comes to posting ridiculous, easily debunked rubbish, conservative memes have no competition.
Have you ever received those email forwards that tell you how people are putting HIV-loaded syringes on gas pump handles or that if you forward within 10 minutes, you’ll meet the person of your dreams? Yeah, that kind of rubbish that preys on the gullible or pulls on your heartstrings – and in this case, it’s in the form of memes.
Before we get into the worst conservative memes of the week, here’s quick little background on web memes for you. They’ve been around since the beginning of the internet in one form or another, and Smithsonian Magazine has compiled a list of top ten unforgettable web memes which includes “Chuck Norris Facts.” Anyone else remember those?
Web memes often serve as advertising, especially on Facebook, for pages which use them to draw followers which they hope to translate into customers or traffic to their respective websites. Out of all of these, the most famous is probably George Takei, although there are much larger pages which do the same thing. For the sake of transparency, we here at Forward Progressives create memes as well in order to advertise our site, as do many other sites.
Now, with that brief rundown out of the way, on to the dumbest conservative memes.
5. Number five comes to us from the Facebook page “The Revolution” which claims to be “The Best Conservative News Source” and runs stories from dcgazette.com and universalfreepress.com.
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| A “Missing” poster from the conservative Facebook page called “The Revolution.” |
The stupidity behind this meme is that it relies on the constant narrative that the President is always on vacation, as well as a shot at his wardrobe which is meant imply that he isn’t “a real man.” As Allen Clifton pointed out a few days ago, the conservative complaints about President Obama’s vacations (he’s on pace to take half the vacation days that George W. Bush did) or playing golf are utterly ridiculous. They’re even more ridiculous when the Republican-controlled Congress is on yet another break and has done little else other than to constantly attempt to repeal or defund the Affordable Care Act – when they’re not holding another investigation or trying to sue the President.
On top of all that, the image wasn’t even created by “The Revolution,” they just swiped the advertising for another site and didn’t even bother to credit them. So much for “liberals are lazy,” huh?
