The Daily Caller's Jim Treacher dug up a previously overlooked excerpt in chapter two of Barack Obama's bestselling book Dreams from My Father this week that details the president's early years growing up in Indonesia. “With Lolo," the president writes, "I learned how to eat small green chill peppers raw with dinner (plenty of rice), and, away from the dinner table, I was introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)." In the scope of the presidential candidates-mistreating-dogs storyline (started by Mitt Romney's famous Seamus-on-the-roof incident), this was news, as it gave the right a chance to hit back and show Obama, too, has a troubled history with man's best friend. So with this snippet the right did run, with its more photoshop-savvy readers taking to twitter to share variations of the Obama-eating-dog meme.
Initially, their edited photographs were ignored by such meme-tracking websites as BuzzFeed, which prompted the conservative website Big Journalism to accuse the Ben Smith-led site of ignoring the photos, after months of poking fun at Romney. "Even though the site is called BUZZfeed Politics," John Nolte writes, "and one of the proprietors, Mr. Smith, is obsessed with nonsense, as of this writing there is nothing on the site about the most buzzed-about political story today--Obama eating a dog." Smith, defending his site, mockingly called the oversight a problem: "BuzzFeed is unwilling to indulge in the politics of the absurd."
"More like politics of the hilarious," another Twitter user struck back. Critics say these photos simply aren't funny, while others dismiss them as just plain ignorant, mocking the president for being not like us.
But still, the Obama-eats-a-dog meme was there, offending some, entertaining others, and illustrating the dog-centric storyline that enveloped the media covering the presidential campaign; so for that, it's our meme of the week.
Playing off of Shepard Fairey 's now famous 2008 "Hope" poster, this image features a similarly stylized dog facing a darker future than hope--"Dinner." The Twitter user who shared it called Obama "America's first dog-eating president. Now that really is historic!"
This spoof of the Obama-eats-a-dog meme takes a photograph of the president dining at Washington's outpost of the famous New York City restaurant, Carmine's, and replaces his plate of Italian food with a puppy—belly-up.
There were plenty of variations of this photograph of the president taking Bo for a run across White House lawn, originally taken by Chip Somodevilla for Getty Images and one of the first from Bo's first official photo shoot. Twitter users shared images of the president chasing Bo with knives, pots, and pans.
When President Obama visited supporters on the campus of Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, little did he know the photograph of him eating a burger would later be used against him--Twitter users simply photoshopped in a dog between the buns, and added to the meme.
Not-too-clever Photoshoppers took a commonly-seen photograph of President Obama eating fried chicken, and swapped out the bird for a dogburger, as seen in this altered image.
If these are feeling repetitive at this point, it’s because they are. Like this image, tweeters contributing to the meme followed the standard formula: find a photo of the president eating, photoshop in a dog, and share it. It’s simple, but it worked. After seeing a few of these, however, you begin to understand why the media ignored this meme the first time around.
This Associated Press photograph, featuring the then-Senator Obama enjoying a hot dog at an Independence Day picnic in Butte, Montana, is altered to show a wiener dog in the clutches of the folksy president.
"No, Mr. President," this wiener dog is saying in an image style the internet has affectionately dubbed an "advice animal," "I'm not 'what's for dinner.'"
And no meme would be complete without its own version of the Hitler Downfall meme, and here it is, in which the Führer learns his beloved Fluffy has been devoured by the leader of the free world.
