The Republican party seems to be making good on its threat to venture into the liberal-infested waters of online media, doing what it can to appeal to voters who refrained from forwarding that email from grandma before it dries up into a fossil of obsolescence. Maybe this blog post full of moving images can succeed where Congressional Republicans have failed—three dozen times.
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank with an active Twitter feed, has made another lurching step toward relevancy with its inaugural contribution to Buzzfeed's collection of mostly insipid listicles with "That One Time I Was Really, Really Excited About Obamacare."
I struggle to think of a time when conservatives were ever "really really" excited about Obamacare, but let us not quibble over semantics. Let's focus on the listicle itself. The .gifs, of which there appear to be no less than 615, are handled with the same bumbling sense of unease as parents who text somber messages in shorthand [See: Rocky died 2day :( :( :( ] and a rhinoceros attempting to paint.
Like so many Buzzfeed lists proffered by "community contributors" (not to be confused with "sponsored posts," which this is not), the images and corresponding headlines are all variations of the same sentiment, which is, "OBAMA HAS PROMISED YOU STUFF AND HE HAS LIED."
Most offensively, the subjects of the .gifs are almost entirely images of comedians and actors who want absolutely nothing to do with the Heritage Foundation. John Stewart? Adam Scott? Jimmy Fallon? A baby? Dear Heritage Foundation: If you're going to trash Obama, you have to do it using your own resources, not co-opting the image of left-leaning comedians and innocent apolitical children for your right-wing agenda. Them's the rules.
As one commenter aptly put it: "Keep at it, Heritage Foundation. You'll get this eventually."
