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.
