Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) just ushered in a new era of political discourse:
After President Obama unveiled a new community college plan last week, Boehner responded with a listicle of 12 Taylor Swift GIFs.
Last week President Obama announced that he wanted to create affordable and accessible opportunities for anyone to attend a two year Associates Degree program. His vision is that such education programs should be “free for everybody willing to work for it.”
In an attempt to respond to the President in not only an eloquent manner, but also in a way that the younger, hipper, community college crowd demographics could digest, Boehner (or more likely one of his interns, pointed out the Christian Science Monitor) boiled down his response into a listicle of Taylor Swift GIFs.
The listicle narrative device was pioneered in recent years and is a way to boil down a complex subject like discussing higher education in America, into a dozen second-long videos. The format is simple and intuitive: simple sentences are augmented with a series of photos or video clips that explain an issue or problem with brevity. It also helps the author avoid having to write explanatory paragraphs and saves the reader from well, reading.
“Last week, President Obama announced his latest idea to provide “free” community college to millions of Americans. It sounded exciting at first…But then, we got to thinking…Free?! Is he using magic money?” Boehner wrote, as various clips show the teen pop idol jumping around excited, stroking her chin, and looking frazzled and confused. “Nothing is free. So we did a little math. Turns out…when President Obama said “free” what he meant was ’60 Billion dollars over 10 years.’ Not even all the Taylor Swift album sales in the world would cover that bill.”
While the Speaker of the House’s webpage is now indiscernible from that of BuzzFeed (something the Founding Fathers certainly never saw coming), this is not the first time politicians have tried to combine the subjects of politics and pop culture in a cringeworthy attempt to relate to the masses.
Most notably during the depths of the Obamacare debate Rep. Tom Massie (R-KY) employed a butchered version of the doge meme to get across to his constituents that Congress had “Much bipartisanship. Very spending. Wow.”
While it never looks good, when the older generation tries to meddle in the affairs of its descendents, in the end, politicians cannot resist the urge of joining in the fun of pop culture in a futile attempt to show young voters they “get it.”
