On Wednesday night, the first of the 2012 presidential debates happened. Snap polls taken after the debate gave a decisive victory to Mitt Romney. While Romney's spokespeople walked back many of his statements, and many in the press acknowledged that many of the statements that Romney said were not true, the media gave the victory to Romney on style points. They thought the President looked sluggish, and Obama was often unwilling to challenge Romney forcefully on his facts. The media also piled on the debate moderator Jim Lehrer, whom they thought did an atrocious job of reigning the two candidates in. YBGP did a live blog of the debates found here. Neither Emily nor I really found the debate to be so one sided, so it has been interesting listening to the post-debate coverage. Emily covers the post-debate spin here. But of course, after every media event these days, the memes take over. So to wrap up debate week over here at YBGP, here are some of the memes that have emerged since the debate....
1. The Romney is a liar meme, which has actually been around for a while.
2. Jim Lehrer is an ineffectual moderator, with Romney as Kanye, and Lehrer as Taylor Swift.
... or the Stapler Guy from Office space...
3.In what has become by far the most popular meme, when Romney threatened to cut off funding for PBS if he was elected, Big Bird and Sesame Street started to trend on social media.
4. I have no idea why this one is so popular, but I see it everywhere, the candidates reimagined with switched hairdos.
5. Chris Matthews had a post-debate meltdown, much to the glee of many. ROMNEY WAS WINNING!!!!
Well there you have it, some of the most popular debate memes to emerge from the first debate. What struck me immediately is how actually pro-Obama many of them are, despite his panned performance. Do liberals tend to participate in meme-making more often? Am I just not on the right sites (I do scan the right-wing sites, but didn't really see many memes thus far)? Will Obama come out swinging for the next debates? Will Romney double down on his debate tactics? The next debate is town hall style, how do you think that will effect the two candidates styles?
I think that younger people tend to be meme-makers, and that does skew a bit pro-Obama, but it's not like there have been no conservative memes (You Didn't Build That springs to mind). Maybe they were too busy hanging out at C-PAC. :-)
ReplyDeletePS The Winning a Debate, Romney-Style (the very first pic) has got to be my favorite, because it sums up my problem with the "Romney won" theory.
ReplyDeleteI was thinking about the "you didn't build that" meme, and I still have no idea why there hasn't been a popular, widespread right-wing meme in the aftermath of the debates. It seems ripe for one. Maybe they are too relieved right now to think of one. I guess we should give them some time...
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