Memetic Mutation/Real Life/Politics

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


That's right, even politics can be a great source of memes, though it's not that surprising considering the kind of stuff that escape the lips of certain politicians.

UK Politics

  • Tony Blair, in a very real sense, promised to be tough on memes, and tough on the causes of memes.
  • Activate the Queen!
  • "Did you threaten to overrule him?"
  • "I agree with Nick." [1]
    • Sorry!: "Mr Long Legged Cleggy Weggy!"
    • The Sun's headline for the announcement of the Conservative/Liberal coalition was "Nick Clegg Agrees with Dave" [2]
  • Education, Education, Education.
  • In a very real sense, Tony Blair could become Prime Minister within 45 minutes, with the three priorities of education, education and education, and being tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime.
  • William Hague drinks 14 pints a day.
    • Nick Clegg's slept with no more than 30 women.
  • Crisis? What crisis?
    • Actually a Beam Me Up, Scotty- Jim Callaghan didn't actually say it, it was just the headline.
      • James Traficant was quite fond of Beam Me Up, Scotty
        • Jim Traficant's toupee is self-aware and plans on running in the next election.
  • British PM Gordon Brown saves the world.
  • We shall fight them on the memes...
  • As Harold Wilson often pointed out, "they" were out to get him.
  • Because that is the right thing to do.
  • I've never voted Tory before...
  • These memes are not fit for purpose.
  • Je ne regret rien.[3]
  • The River Tiber blah blah blah foaming with blood blah blah blah....
  • Muslamic ray-guns.[4]
  • John Major: "Back to Basics", "Bastards" (referring to some of his colleagues).
  • His predecessor Margaret Thatcher: "The lady's not for turning", "No! No! No!", "We are a grandmother" (apparently adopting the royal personal pronoun, there) "Ten more years!".
  • Nicholas Ridley made the expression NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) into his own meme while Secretary of State for the Environment.
  • The Reverend Ian Paisley and his, "I denounce you as the Anti Christ!" rant.
    • NO SURRENDER!!!

US Politics

  • I LIKE IKE!
  • Memetic-mutate one for the Gipper.
  • Where's the beef? (This was already something of a mutation due to its use in the Wendy's commercials? Walter Mondale used it further in 1984 to criticize his rival Gary Hart for his lack of new ideas.)
  • Any number of "Bushisms" during the early days of Dubya's presidency.
    • And the earlier Quayleisms, to which many of the "Bushisms" look remarkably similar.
    • He is also "the decider", but Kanye West is mad at him because he "doesn't care about black people".
      • You have to give him some credit. Bush did not "forget Poland".
      • The best part of it was how unflappable Mike Myers was by the comments.
    • "Thank you. ...now watch this drive." *golf swing*
    • The, uh... Internets and The Google.
    • Defining Bush's Memetic Mutation in one word: "Strategery"
    • "Fool TV Tropes once: shame...shame on you. You fool TV Tropes you can't get fooled again."
    • Palinisms are also popular, you betcha.
    • "Is our children learning?"
  • Joe Biden on Healthcare passage: "This is a big fucking deal!"
  • Sue Lowden made headlines by saying people should pay for healthcare by bartering with chickens.
  • "Release the Kagan!"- A meme referring to Supreme Court nomine Elena Kagan and taking inspiration from a meme from the Clash of the Titans remake.
  • Ross Perot is a walking, talking generator of memes.
  • Bob Dole. You know it, I know it, and the American people know it.
    • Bob Dole knows that Bob Dole is a meme machine.
    • Viagra is the shit. You know it, the American people know it, and most especially Bob Dole's pocketbook knows it.
  • "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
  • Rudy Giuliani didn't 9/11 have to time to think about 9/11 memes when he was mayor 9/11. Cause that was 9/11 when 9/11 happened, you know?
    • It was even funnier when he went on Fox and said that no terrorist attacks had happened during the time George Bush was president, seemingly having forgotten about 9/11.
  • Good God, Nancy Pelosi, did someone put a bug zapper on your chair? Sit down and stop clapping!
  • "Hey, hey! Ho, ho! [insert name/issue here] has got to go." Heard at every rally every time everywhere.
  • 'Axis of Evil' - George W. Bush via David Frum.
  • Aretha Franklin's ludicrously impressive hat from Barack Obama's inauguration has taken on a bit of a life of its own.
  • Nobody messes with Joe. Joe Biden, Memetic Badass!
    • Good God, Joe Biden is a living Internet meme.
    • Rahm "Rahmbo" Emanuel (former Illinois congressman and now Obama's Chief of Staff candidate for Mayor-elect of Chicago) has a Chuck-Norris-like website dedicated to facts about him. And they're completely true, too!
  • This Fucking Election, for all your campaign memes.
  • From the crowd behind MSNBC's Democratic convention desk, "BRING BACK CRYSTAL PEPSI!"
    • The image with that and a sign right next to it saying "I SHAVED MY BALLS FOR THIS!?"
  • Pete Hoekstra's comparison between the Iranian student revolution and the Republican shutdown of the House quickly became Snark Bait on Twitter (e.g., "I took one Tylenol and had a nap. Now I know what is was like for Heath Ledger.").
  • Former senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) is known for denying being gay ("I am not gay; I never have been gay.") after trying to deny a guilty plea to soliciting sex (by tapping his foot) in a Minneapolis airport men's bathroom, where his hand and foot were close to the stall divider because he had a "wide stance".
  • Former representative Bill Jefferson (D-Louisiana-2nd) is probably best known for having a wad of cash found in his freezer.
  • South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford (R) created a meme when he lied to his staff about going "hikin' on the ole Appalachian Trail" while he was actually in Argentina visiting his mistress.
  • The one word that dethroned George Allen: "macaca".
  • "I am not a crook"
    • Technically, this is true. He wasn't a crook; he was just spying on people, making enemies lists, and firing people if they didn't do exactly what he wanted them to do, regardless of the legality of the order. But he wasn't stealing from anybody.
  • Related to the above, the Watergate Scandal was so famous that it has led to virtually any subsequent politics-related scandal having the suffix "-gate" appended to it.
  • By the end of his term(s?) TV Tropes will need an entire Memetic Mutation page just for the lines that have sprung out of the anti-Obama protests.
    • Descent is the highest form of patriotic.
    • BIRTH CERTIFICATE WHERE OBAMA WHERE
      • "NOBAMA!" "Yes Bama did."
    • Birthers want to see Obama's penis! In a totally not gay way. ...Really, they should take him out to dinner first.
    • Joe Wilson: You lie!
      • Do we really not have "teabag" yet?
    • GET A BRAIN MORANS!
    • "Well, I think Obama was kinda a dick."
  • As a commentary on Fox News' general style of reporting, people will often work the phrase Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990 into longer paragraphs, never actually making the libelous claim that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, but rather refuting, probing, or questioning the idea that Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990, while still working the phrase Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990 into the paragraph as often as possible, using Bold Inflation to ensure the first phrase that catches the eye is "Glenn Beck raped and murdered a girl in 1990."
    • Wait, I think I missed that. What did Glenn Beck do in 1990 again?
    • It was actually taken from a roast of Bob Saget where Gilbert Gottfried kept claiming that Bob Sagat raped and killed a girl in 1990.
      • He didn't say Bob Saget raped and killed a girl in 1990. He said Bob Saget RRRRRRRAAAAPED AND KILLED A GIRL IN 1990.
    • In a similar example, before it was confirmed, Slate columnist Mickey Kaus said John Edwards obviously had to comment on the rumors he was having an affair; otherwise, it would be absolutely suspect. The liberal blogosphere responded by saying that Kaus needed to confirm the rumor that he blows goats; otherwise, it would be absolutely suspect.
    • Did Glenn Beck rape and kill a girl in 1990? America wants to know?[5]
  • A well-publicized election for the seat of governor of Louisiana saw Edwin Edwards, a well-established figure with a growing reputation for being a fairly "standard" crooked politician, running against David Duke, a Neo-Nazi and former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Before long, the election made nationwide attention, with such signs as "Vote for the crook -- it's important!" and "Vote for the lizard, not the wizard!"
    • Fool me once, shame on... shame on you... you fool me, I can't get fooled again.
  • George H.W. Bush: "Read my lips." (Even in the Animaniacs presidents song: "And President Bush said 'Read my lips'...")
    • Also, New World Order. He didn't invent the term (and used it to define how the world would improve after The Cold War, but his use of it caused the idea to go haywire and degenerate into a term for some secret society plotting world domination.
  • 2004 Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is going to Washington DC to take back The White House! Yeeeaaaah!!
  • All fist jabs must from now on be called terrorist fist bumps.
  • Ted Terbolizard in California. We don't know what he's running for and we're not sure about his platform, but isn't that an awesome name?
    • Unfortunately, an Idaho guy named Pro-Life (formerly known as Marvin Richardson, but who legally changed his name just to be on the ballot) didn't seem to get much traction.
  • Someone made a write-in vote for "Lizard People" in Minnesota in 2008. At least, that's what the judges ruled.
  • This land is your land...
  • RON PAUL REVOLUTION.
    • Google Ron Paul!
    • And his amazing hypno-blimp!
    • RON PAUL 2012! WHOOO!!
    • Why isn't anybody paying attention to Ron Paul?
    • "Should we let that person die?" [crowd screaming yes]
  • Theodore Roosevelt would've come up earlier in the page but he was too busy beating a grizzly bear to death with his bare hands. Perhaps the source of every Chuck Norris meme out there

Thomas Marshall: Death had to take him sleeping. For if Roosevelt had been awake, there would have been a fight.

    • And just to provide proof of his toughness... well, just look at the CMOA section of his TV Tropes page.
  • Now let me be clear. Hope. Change. More hope. Change we can believe in. Have I made myself clear?
  • Dennis Kucinich's UFO sightings went pretty memetic during the primaries.
    • Hell, everything about him was a cartoon character at some point. Typical of a Congressman from California. Oh wait, he's from Ohio?
  • Let's talk about how memes affect Joe the Plumber.
  • On yer bike!
  • Ralph Nader receives 3% of popular vote
  • It's the economy, stupid.
  • For five-and-a-half years, John McCain couldn't enjoy memes because he was a POW in Vietnam. FIVE AND A HALF YEAR, ALAN.
  • John Kerry was for this meme before he was against it.
    • You may not be aware, but John Kerry served in Vietnam.
    • He also wishes to know who among us does not love NASCAR.
    • He forgot Poland!
      • HE BOTCHED IT!
      • MR. KERRY!
      • Believe it or not, there was an entire set of memorabilia being sold around the internet that had to do with Bush not forgetting Poland.
    • And he won three Purple Hearts!
  • "The internet is not something that you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." Thank former senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) for this gem.
    • Did Ted Stevens ever come up with a meme? NO!! No he did not!
    • If only he had gotten that "an Internet" that his staff tried to send him...
    • Dagnabbit.
  • Al Gore invented the internet.
    • From a lockbox.
    • He also let us know that sometimes global warming means global cooling.
    • He didn't invent the internet, but he did invent global warming.
  • Sarah Palin Tina Fey can see Russia from her house.
    • Gosh-o-golly...
    • Sarah Palin hunts moose and wolves from her helicopter.
    • Levi Johnston: he is a f** kin' redneck who likes to snowboard and ride dirt bikes. But he lives to play hockey. He likes to go camping and hang out with the boys, do some fishing, shoot some sh* t and just f** kin' chillin' I guess. Ya f* ck with him he'll kick ass.
    • You betcha!
    • What's the difference between a hockey mom and a pitbull? Lipstick!
    • We're not the party of no. We're the party of Hell No! (although she was quoting Boehner)
    • Can we count on your support for the The Sarah Palin Hookworms Conjecture?
    • Refudiate... Shakespeare liked to coin new words too!
    • Look at the mama grizzly brown bear. She's showing her cubs that nobody's gonna do it for you, you have to go do it for yourself. And that's what we're trying to do with the American people.
      • Well, Todd built on the fence to keep the neighbors from looking in. We built the fence ourselves. I think that's what we should do with the border.
  • Bill Clinton smoked, but he didn't inhale. He also did not have sexual relations with that woman ... Miss Lewinsky. (Replace the ellipsis with a comma, and it changes the statement to sound like he's addressing Monica. Hilarity Ensues.)
  • Ford to City: DROP DEAD
  • Mr Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my comments on this flawed politics meme.
  • "I wish the news media would do a deep investigation into the views of members of Congress and find out: Are they pro-America, or anti-America?"
  • Shelley DraculaCunt Sekula Gibbs
  • DEMON SHEEP.
    • Tom Campbell is a FCINO?
  • John Fitzgerald Kennedy would like to say... Ich bin ein Berliner!
  • From the Tennessee Gubernatorial election, we get: "Hi, I'm Basil Marceaux Dot Com. VOTE FOR ME AND IF I WIN I WILL IMMUNE YOU FROM ALL STATE CRIMES FOR THE REST OF YOU LIFE!(Except violating a citizen rights this would be a special punishment)
  • ANTHONY WEINER WILL NOT YIELD TO THE GENTLEMAN. THE GENTLEMAN WILL OBSERVE REGULAR ORDER.
    • THE GENTLEMAN WILL SIT. THE GENTLEMAN IS CORRECT IN SITTING.
      • Now Anthony Weiner has become another meme...for all the wrong reasons.
  • "I got this thing and it's fucking golden ..." - Rod Blagojevich
  • Christine O'Donnell:
  • "I represent the Rent Is Too Damm High Party... My main job is too provide a roof over your head, food on your table, and money in your pocket."
  • Thanks to Alvin Greene, we now know that Jim DeMint started the recession.
  • while being arrested in a sting for cocaine use and possession, DC Mayor Marion Barry uttered the classy line: "Bitch set me up!"
  • And the winner of the Alaska election is Lisa Mulkowsky Murbrowlsky Murkrowski Mullberrski Colbert Markowski Mellelski Murkowski.
  • Fuck it! We'll do it live!
    • Sun comes up, sun goes down. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.
      • Tide goes out, tide comes in. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that.
      • Put even number of socks in dryer, pull out odd number. You can't explain that.
      • Put garbage on curb in morning, come home and find it gone. You can't explain that.
    • Oh yeah? Well, who put the sun there? Who put the moon there? You can't. You can't explain it.
  • Recently, a picture was taken of congressman David Wu, while he was dressed like this.
  • Jews for Buchanan! [6]
  • The racist spam "The Long March" in general. Helps that it hit every inbox in America at once.
  • Nice to have a Long Dong Silver fan on the bench.[7]
  • Not intended to be a factual statement.[8]
  • Harry Truman: "That ain't how I heard it!"
  • ....military industrial complex....
  • Pay any price! Bear any burden! (You listening, Michael Malone?)
  • In your heart you know he's right....but in your guts you know he's nuts.
  • [expletive deleted]!
  • The Soviet Union does not dominate Eastern Europe.
  • I have lusted in my heart....
  • ....well....
  • We should be more like The Waltons and less like The Simpsons.
  • I hope you don't mind where I put this cigar, kiddo....
  • Jon Kyl's comment was not intended to be a factual statement.
  • "I'm in control." [9]
  • To impress Jodie Foster...[10]
  • What does Roy McDonald say about Gay Marriage in New York? "FUCK IT, I'M TRYING TO DO THE RIGHT THING."
    • Football makes you an expert on homosexuality, what with all those tight ends.[11]
  • Anthony's weiner [12]
  • Corporations are people! [13]
  • "Job creator/death tax" is not a meme. [14]
  • Yeeha! [15]
  • I just Googled Santorum...
    • A paper towel is not a napkin.
  • Today, Rick Perry shot a coyote to death on his morning jog.
    • Rick Perry also executed 234 inmates. And he gets applause for it.
  • Miserable failure.[16]
  • Herman Cain says it's your own damn fault for being poor.[17]
    • Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan is so simple, anybody can understand it.
      • We're dealing with apple and oranges. Just very apple-like oranges and very orange-like apples.
    • We'll build an electrical fence on the border. (Just kidding (Unless you're into that kind of thing, in which case, totally)).
    • Who is the president of Ubeki-beki-beki-stan-stan? Herman Cain doesn't know either.
    • Imagine there's no pizza.
    • I believe it comes from the Poekeemon movie.[18]
      • John Stewart's coverage has also added the phrase "Shellder Of Knowledge" to the world's vocabulary.
  • Privilege-Denying Dude. Popular on feminist and social justice blogs to satirize clueless white guys.
  • "It's just food product, essentially." [19]
  • Pizza is a vegetable. [20]
  • I am a troper. I joined this website because I didn't know what it was. Every post I make is deleted or will get me edit-banned, even if I'm right. I am not among the tropers who are well-known. I am the 99%.[21]
    • OCCUPY TV TROPES [22]
      • The shenanigans of the OWSers actually have caused a lot of Narmy memes on their own, though, while their spiel has produced it's fair share of Forced Memes of screeching cliches/platitudes.
  • Chris Matthews gets a thrill up his leg when listening to Obama's speeches.
  • Al Sharpton so eloquently said "Resist we much".
  • Harry Reid on Obama: He's a light-skinned black man with no black dialect.
  • Harry Truman: Dewey wins election! [23]
  • George W. Bush did have some Badass dodging skills when he went up against that shoe. Perhaps he's a ninja?
  • Donald Rumsfeld and the difference between known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.
  • Racist! [24]
  • Barbara Boxer: "Don't call me ma'am!"
  • Hank Johnson: "It looks like Guam is about to tip over".
  • There have been a number of Unusual Euphemisms spawned from political sex scandals.
    • Foot-Tapping in the Men's Room.
      • Wide stance.
    • Lifting his luggage.
  • Rck Santorum's two racial fuck-ups. "I don't want to make black people's life better" (as well as his ridiculous excuse, that he just said "blah people"), and - talking about Obama - "anti-government nig-...uh..."
  • Mitt Romney's kind of like an Etch-a-Sketch. You can shake it up and he starts all over again. [25]
  • Thanks, Obama!
  • <something unhinged from Postmodernist Socialists> <image of Donald Trump> "Shit like this is why I won".
  • God-Emperor!
  • Praise Kek!
    • Free Kekistan!

The third one... I forgot. Oops.

Australian Politics

  • Gough Whitlam (Australian Prime Minister, 1972-1975): "Well may we say God Save the Queen... because nothing will save the Governor General."
  • Malcolm Fraser (Australian Prime Minister, 1975-1983) not wearing pants, in reference to an incident in Memphis, 1986.
  • Bob Hawke (Australian Prime Minister, 1983-1991): "No Australian child will be living in poverty by the year 1990!"
    • "Any boss that sacks somebody for not turning up to work today is a bum!"
  • Paul Keating (Australian Prime Minister, 1991-1996): "This is the recession we had to have."
    • Keating is also remembered for his comment when Andrew Peacock became leader of the opposition for the second time: "A souffle doesn't rise twice."
    • Keating! The Musical (oh yes) is basically a long list of these set to music, with a little bit of filler.
  • Pauline Hanson: "Please explain."
  • John Howard (Australian Prime Minister, 1996-2007): "There will never, ever be a GST."
    • Is that a core or non-core promise?
    • "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come!"
  • Kevin Rudd (Australian Prime Minister, 2007-2010): 'Fair shake of the sauce bottle mate.'
    • 'In due season.'
      • 'HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA' from Kevin Rudd, PM.
      • I think you're all forgetting about his 'detailed programmatic specificities'.
      • 'Working families'. Before he became PM, one could play a drinking game whenever he appeared on the news based around how often he uttered that phrase.
      • And now, one can play the same drinking game with Tony Abbott and the phrase "Great big tax".
    • Kevin '07.
    • "...long-term prosperity without (pointing behind him with his thumb) throwing the fair go out the back door."
  • Julia Gillard (Australian Prime Minister, 2010–present):
    • "Moving Forward", "Moving Australia Forward" and all associated slogans. To the point the Twitter hashtag is "#mofo"
    • The "REAL Julia Gillard" (generally parodied with queries as to who or what the "old Julia" was)
  • Julie Bishop's Death Glare.
  • Don Chipp, in support of the Australian Democratic Party during the 1980 election: "Keep the bastards honest!"
  • Tony Abbott: "Shit happens."
    • Tony Abbott's red speedos.

European Politics

  • Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former French Prime Minister: "Win the yes needs the no to win against the no."
  • King Juan Carlos I of Spain saying to Hugo Chávez, "¿Por qué no te callas?" (Why don't you [just] shut up).
  • Nicolas Sarkozy was there.
    • To elaborate: Sarkozy once posted a photo of him taking a hammer to the Berlin Wall on Facebook claiming he was there on the day the wall fell. However, some French journalists noticed there was no way he could have been there on that day and eventually found out that the photo was taken a full week later. Then some internauts started posting more photos of Sarkozy's "illustrious past"...
  • After Italy's prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (already in his seventies) attended a 18 years old model's birthday party, some suspicious photos from the party itself leaked on the Web where some of the guests look Photoshop-inserted in them. A blog called "Brinda con Papi" (cheers with Daddy, after the nickname the model used with Berlusconi) had quite some fun inserting other special guests.
    • Let's not forget the other party Berlusconi had (on Sardinia). You know, the one with the rather protuberant Czech Prime Minister. (He lost his job for that). Stephen Colbert explains and applauds.
    • We then found out about his orgies, or whatever the hell else a "bunga bunga party" may be.
  • In 2011, local elections in Italy featured two main contenders for the role of mayor in Milan (the second most important city in the country): incumbent centre-right mayor Letizia Moratti (heavily sponsored by Berlusconi) and centre-left candidate Giuliano Pisapia. In a public TV confrontation, Moratti accused Pisapia of being a car thief, a communist and on friendly terms with left-wing extremists, hoping to scare people into not voting for him. Instead, it gave birth to "Pisapia facts": people on Twitter as well as Facebook and various other websites started churning out incredibly exaggerated accusations against Pisapia, with the implicit assumption that they could have been told by Moratti. At the end of the campaign, people were laughing so much that nobody was able to consider Moratti seriously anymore, resulting in her defeat.
    • And then someone asked Moratti on her Twitter page about what her administration was going to do against an illicit mosque in the "Sucate" neighborhood; someone on her staff answered that they were going to keep on eye on it... but there is no place called "Sucate" in Milan. This was such an epic fail for the incumbent mayor that "Sucate" became another instant meme. Made more hilarious by the fact that Sucate means "Suck it" in many northern Italian dialects... including the one spoken in Milan itself.
  • Former Czech prime minister Jiří Paroubek, a singularly unattractive, froglike man, ditched his first wife for a beautiful young woman. In one of her first interviews with the press, she answered the obvious question "How is it possible that such an attractive young woman is interested in a man who isn't exactly a symbol of masculine beauty?" by saying that the main thing she finds sexy about a man is his brain. Thenceforth Paroubek became "Sexy Brain".
  • Irish PM Bertie Ahern's (in)famous misstatements: "smokes and daggers", "upset the apple tart".
  • Brian Lenihan (the older) would like to state, on mature recollection, that he has never used memes.
  • Pope Benedict XVI is Palpatine. Look at him!
  • "There is not much choice. Because we fucked it up. Not a little, but a lot." - a famous sentence from former Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany's Engineered Public Confession, often set to the tune of his electoral campaign's theme song.
    • Also, anything, and I mean ANYTHING said by his predecessor Peter Medgyessi - who's memetic status is often compared to that of a certain US president.
  • In German politics, Joschka Fischer, then a junior MP,[27] infamously told the vice president of the Bundestag "Mit Verlaub, Herr Präsident, Sie sind ein Arschloch" (Translation: With respect, Mr. President, you are an asshole).

Asian Politics

  • Former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos won the elections partly thanks to his memetic speech, "This Nation Can Be Great Again." And with him, it was.
    • Another former president: the sheer popularity of "Erap jokes" forever cemented Joseph Estrada as a memetic moron in the Filipino consciousness.
      • It has to be noted that most, if not all the so called "Erap jokes" were created by himself!
    • And a possible future President: SENATOR MANNY PACQUIAO WILL BEAT THE SHIT OUT OF CORRUPTION.
  • NORTH KOREA IS BEST KOREA.
  • "The Japanese Agriculture Ministry is not responsible for Gundam." - From a statement issued when the Japanese Agriculture Ministry caught two of its employees editing That Other Wiki's Gundam page on government time.
  • An indirect version with the Red Army Orchestra, which some believe to be a regular orchestra and singers wearing Red Army uniforms rather than actual Chinese Communist soldiers. Their performance of "Magnificent Soldiers Crossing The Red River Four Times" (something like that) has had its video extracted and synced with one song after another, including Michael Jackson's "Beat It".

African Politics

  • Late 2000s' Moamar Gaddafi's insistent "My people love me!" despite all evidence to the contrary has acquired this status.
  • South African politics has ANC Youth League president Julius Malema and his outburst at a BBC journalist during a press conference at ANC headquarters. That outbreak resulted in this house track. Of course, "Bloody Agent" wasn't the first meme he generated, but after this he was disciplined by his party for the first time (much to the relief of reasonable South Africans).
  • A presentation by Ugandan pastor Martin Ssempa in support of the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill resulted in EAT DA POO POO becoming an internet meme within seconds.
  • Dr. Vegetable.[28]
  • Lieutenant Colonel Hussein Sharif from Egypt has attained memetic status. He is better known as "the guy behind Omar Suleiman".
  • Egypt has several memes about its old presidents. The most famous, however, is that Hosni Mubarak is an idiot/donkey (same thing in Egyptian Arabic) obsessed with ruling Egypt forever. One joke from the '90s goes:

So Mubarak hears that the Scots have just cloned a sheep. He immediately asks his doctors to clone him--that way, he reasons, he can rule forever! But when the job is done, the clone looks nothing like him--it's a donkey. Enraged, he fires his doctors and gets the best biologists in Egypt to try again. The second time around--another donkey. He then decides to go to the source, and hires the original Scottish team to do the job. To his delight, they produce a perfect clone of him. "How did you do it?" he asks. "Actually, we're kind of confused," the Scottish biologist replied. "This isn't your clone. We got this guy by trying to clone a donkey."

    • Another old joke:

Abdel Nasser appointed Sadat vice-president because Sadat was stupider than him. Sadat appointed Mubarak vice-president because Mubarak was stupider than him. Mubarak never appointed a vice-president, because he couldn't find anyone in the country stupider than him.


Latin-American Politics

  • Ask any Chilean person if "El Mercurio miente". Go on, I'll wait for you trying to decode the possible replies.
    • The phrase is translated as "El Mercurio lies", alluding to a right-wing newspaper targeted for upper class people, which has been questioned for its obvious and rabid right-wing slant ever since The Sixties, when right-wing university students wrote the phrase on a HUGE flag during a student strike after the newspaper downright lied about their motives and their political orientation.
    • Ricardo Lagos's index finger has been a source of jokes for at least 20 years, after he used it during an interview to address Augusto Pinochet.
    • Sebastian Piñera's malapropisms are certainly memetic, too, as well as his qualities as The Jinx.
    • "[insert a name/thing/etc.] es REGULEQUE!" [29]
  • Librería Peña Nieto [30]
  • Besides that infamous Royal Shut Up, controversial late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez was a living and breathing meme magnet:
    • "...el soberano mesmo..."[33]
    • The vertical henhouses [34]
    • Aló Presidente / Las cadenas [35]
    • Rojo Rojito [37]
    • Mission Patriotic Troping [38]
    • Esteban de Jesús [39]
    • "¡Déjenlo trabajar!" [40]
    • ¡Mi Comandante! [41]
    • Every insult Chavez directed towards his opponents. From "Escualido" to "Majunche", all of them memetically repeated by his followers and oponents.
  • Nicolás Maduro, Chavez's sucessor, has become a well known Malaproper, and has gained the fame of being pretty dim. Some of his most memetic moments:
    • El Pajarito/"The little bird" tale [44]
    • Millones y millonas [45]
    • Capuskicapubul [46]
  • From Venezuela (again) "Pero Tenemos Patria" [47]
    • "Venezuela se está arreglando" [48]

Other Politics

  1. ↑ The phrase uttered most often by the incumbent prime minister in the first 2010 UK PM debate was that he agreed with one of his opponents, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg. Said opponent's party gained 10% in the polls overnight and he has had lots of people agreeing with him every day since.
  2. ↑ David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party.
  3. ↑ Going back a bit, this is Norman Lamont. Note for all government ministers, if you are asked to pick your biggest regret from a definitive list and you don't regret those things, do not say that you regret nothing, the press will pick up the worst thing you ever did and report that you just said you didn't regret that.
  4. ↑ A vox pop taken at an English Defence League demo, in which the protester lamented the existence of what sounded like "Muslamic [sic] ray-guns". Several Stupid Statement Dance Mixes ensued, of which this is most popular. The original meaning remains unclear, but in context it appears to have been a malapropism for "regimes".
  5. ↑ And is it a lie if I phrase it in the form of question?
  6. ↑ Pat Buchanan has historically praised Adolf Hitler. He got a disproportionate amount of the Jewish vote in Palm Beach County because they thought they were voting for Lieberman.
  7. ↑ Anita Hill alleged that Clarence Thomas said to her that his penis was comparable to Long Dong Silver's.
  8. ↑ Jon Kyl claimed 90% of Planned Parenthood procedures were abortion when it was actually 3%. When called out on it, his office released that statement. Stephen Colbert made it a trending twitter topic.
  9. ↑ Alexander Haig was "in control" after Reagan was shot and they couldn't phone Bush, but as Secretary of State, he wouldn't have become president. The Speaker of the House would, then the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, and then Haig.
  10. ↑ The reason Hinckley shot Reagan. It's not that she's particularly liberal, just that something about her role in Taxi Driver convinced him Reagan was forcing her to sell her body.
  11. ↑ David Tyree's views on gay marriage.
  12. ↑ Lewd photos of Anthony Weiner.
  13. ↑ In addition to legally being true for some odd reason, this was what Mitt Romney said at the Iowa State Fair. Iowa finally got to be a meme!
  14. ↑ A variant of the Milhouse one
  15. ↑ Dean's scream.
  16. ↑ A "Google bomb" was used in the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, causing Google searches for the phrase "miserable failure" to return George W. Bush's official Presidential biography as the first result.
  17. ↑ Herman Cain is the new political Fountain of Memes.
  18. ↑ No, really, he actually quoted the second Pokémon film when closing his campaign.
  19. ↑ Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly's dismissal of the excessive force employed by police against Occupy protestors at UC Davis, the quote specifically concerning pepper spray and how apparently people were being overdramatic about protestors being sprayed in the face by it because it happens to come from peppers. It quickly evolved into a snowclone meme, substituting in something relatively heinous (eg rape) and a similarly dismissive explanation (eg "it's just sex, essentially").
  20. ↑ It was recently passed into law that, for the purpose of meeting school cafeteria nutrition requirements, pizza qualifies as a vegetable because of the tomato sauce. Needless to say, this was mercilessly mocked.
  21. ↑ The Occupy movement, itself memetic in a sense, has generally caused snowclone employment of the style of rhetoric of some of its members as demonstrated here in the context of hypothetical problems with TV Tropes. Similarly, affiliation with either side of the divide of the 99% (the destitute, struggling or the working class) and the 1% (the wealthy} sees similar use.
  22. ↑ Generally sarcastic responses to very minor perceived wrongs, jokingly calling for an Occupy movement to start up around the trouble spot. For the record, this description isn't intended to disparage the purpose or significance of the actual Occupy movement in any way and reflects solely on the memetic use.
  23. ↑ He didn't. It was a close election and he was predicted by the paper, but Truman won re-election and held up the paper that said Dewey won.
  24. ↑ Often used by not-so-knowledgeable people against people who disagree with Obama's policies.
  25. ↑ After Romney won the Illinois primary and began heading into the general election, his senior advisor, Eric Fehrnstrom, said that Romney could simply change his positions on the issues, because Romney as a reputation for constantly changing his positions on the issues to appeal to whatever demographic he's running in to get elected.
  26. ↑ Several days ago Rick Perry released a YouTube video stating "There's something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can't openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school. Since then, YouTube users have been spamming the video with dislikes (which Rick Perry forgot to disable) and reporting it for hate speech, as well as coming up with parody video responses. It has also not gone unnoticed that the jacket Rick Perry wears in the video resembles the one worn by a certain famous gay cowboy. The latest meme has been making GIFS of Rick Perry espousing other unpopular opinions.
  27. ↑ He would later become leader of the Greens, vice-Chancellor, and Foreign Minister.
  28. ↑ Thabo Mbeki's Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, claimed that AIDS was a vitamin deficiency which could be cured by eating your vegetables. This was under lobbying from Dr. Matthias Rath.
  29. ↑ A rather... ditzy and holier-than-thou lady employed in a social-service government agency said in her twitter that her very high salary (as in, almost 3 millions Chilean pesos) was "reguleque", using a (rather outdated) Chilean slang word meaning "just so so". Not only she was forced to resign due to this being the corollary to a series of VERY publicized blunders, but Chilean twitter users and bloggers completely ridiculed and tore her apart for her Genre Blindness.
  30. ↑ A reporter got the then Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto (from PRI) derailed from his typical political discourse during Guadalajara's International Book Fair when the reporter asked him which were his favourite books, for which he mixed and made up the names of a few books from a few prominent Mexican authors. In a few short hours, Peña Nieto became the butt of all kinds of literature-related jokes (including making up new "books" by mixing and matching title names from popular Latin American literary works). Further hilarity ensued when his wife, his daughter, and his daughter's boyfriend tweeted inflammatory messages against Mexico's general populace; Mexican twitters tore the three apart.
  31. ↑ French newspaper "Le Pétit Journal" gave him this epithet when it described him as a charming man, married to a former TV actress, wealthy, good-looking in TV, but also very dumb, after how Justin and Enrique had managed to bungle at general knowledge questions when they get off the script.
  32. ↑ A common sentiment emerging under the rule of Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, Peña Nieto's sucessor, because, unlike López Obrador tendency to never taking fault or responsibility over his failed plans and gaffes, at least Peña Nieto tended to own his mistakes.
  33. ↑ A famous malapropism he said in the early days: he intended to say "El soberano mismo" (a fancy way to say "all the citizens", literally translates as "The very sovereign/the same sovereign"). Every imitator feels obligated to substitute the word "mismo" for "mesmo" to nail his accent
  34. ↑ In an ill fated attempt to reuse urban space, Chavez once proposed that residential buildings and abandoned lots should get 'conucos y gallineros verticales', vegetable garden and (vertical) henhouses, to be self-sufficient. Let's just say that Gallinero vertical now is shorthand for 'another failed bolivarian initiative'
  35. ↑ Chavez loved talking, and despite having his own Sunday Talk Show, he tended to make all the open signal radio and TV networks transmit the same programe (an act known as "cadena" (lit. "chain") in the local parlance) very often to make announcements or just make inane talk.
  36. ↑ A lyric from the Venezuelan Anthem, "¡Abajo cadenas!" ("down with the chains"), has been taken as a protest against the media chaining.
  37. ↑ translating as "red, little red/reddie" The Bolivarian Revolution just loves the color red, using it on just everything. After Chavez saying that his revolution was "roja, rojita", the phrase caught, both as a proud statement ("I'm with Mi Comandante because I'm rojo rojito") and a dismissive ephited ("be careful, that one there is a rojo rojito")
  38. ↑ Every social project promoted by the government is named "Misión [fill blank]", with a patriotic-themed name appropriate to the beneficiary (being either a related historic character or event, or a narmy phrase). This has become a snowclone, ripe for parody in every flank.
  39. ↑ One of the promises Chavez did on his first days in powers was that he would change his name if after his first year in powers there was still kids abandoned on the street. When he obviously didn't either, political gossip columnist and radio host Marianella Salazar decided spontaneously to call him Esteban de Jesús, a name based in a lame pun (Esteban De Jesús = Esteban de Dios = Esteban Dido = Este Bandido= This Thug), on the logic that if he didn't keep his promise, she wasn't obliged to keep calling him by his legal name. Since then, a good lot of people, mostly humorists, had jumped in the bandwagon, to the point that when people says "Esteban" without specification, you know who they are really referring to.
  40. ↑ An early excuse given for both revolutionary officials and Chavez fans for the perceived slow pace of the revolution was that "the opposition/the critics aren't letting Chavez do his work", an excuse being less and less credible with the time, what with the revolutionaries taking over everything and Chavez doing little actual presidential work. When around mid-late 2010 a big billboard emerged in a very centric place in Caracas with "¡Déjenlo trabajar! (Let him do his work!)" written on it, the thing became both an Ascended Meme and a mockery magnet. Briefly revived under Nicolás Maduro's rule
  41. ↑ Pro-Chavez people refer to his as "Mi comandante" because of him being "Comandante en Jefe" (Commander in chief) of the Army Forces among his presidential titles, despite his real military ranking being much lower (to put it in perspective, in Venezuela all presidents, army members or no, are named Commander in chief of the Armies). People against the pro-government faction uses the phrase mockingly.
  42. ↑ Humorists like to pun with the above title, in the lack of respect spirit of the My Name Is Not Durwood trope. This in particular translates as "Governing monkey"; another popular puns are "Mi Comediante" (My Comedian) and "Mi Coma Andante" (My Walking Coma, which was used too with the late Fidel Castro), albeit the latter became a mix of Hilarious and Harsher in Hindsight during Chavez eventually fatal illness, and then after Castros's death
  43. ↑ One Chavez supporter called him as "Nuestro comandante es galáctico y eterno" ("Our Commander is galactic and eternal"). Oppositors immediately retorted to mockingly call Chavez "El Galáctico", lit. "The Galactic one"
  44. ↑ During his election campaign, Maduro told a tale where during a visit to Hugo Chavez natal town, a little bird landed on him full Disney Princess style. Maduro then claimed that the bird what the reincarnation of Mi Comandante, giving him his approval. To Maduro, a Hinduism believer and a Sai Baba follower, that claim actually makes sense, but to the rest of the country, who is Raised Catholic, that declaration was taken as a proof that the guy was some bolts short. Most parodist put a bird on his shoulder to nail the caricature.
  45. ↑ The Bolivarian Revolution is known by their Political Correctness Gone Mad when on language inclusiveness is concerned, where every addressed group of people is called by both their masculine and feminine plurals (for example "ciudadanos y ciudadanas" "obreros y obreras", "revolucionarios y revolucionarias") when in actual RAE approved use the masculine plural can be used as a suitable generic. That was usually mocked by taking it to the logical extreme of doing it on words that has only one gender, but then Maduro, apparently unironically, said the phrase that translates to "male millions and female millions" (in Spanish numbers have no gender) during an actual speech. Now treated as his biggest Epic Fail, the phrase's now going along with the little bird in every parody of the man.
  46. ↑ Giving an speech during a period of protests, Maduro stumbled and said this nonsensical word. For a good while, stencils with the word and an stylized version of his face appeared in the most heated places, while the phrase itself gained an Stupid Statement Dance Mix.
  47. ↑ Literally, "But we have (the) Fatherland" riginally a phrase said by government officers to the people as a way of consolation during the begging of the actual scarcity crisis, in the vein of the Churchill quote "Blood, sweat, toil and tears", often in the form "We may be lacking on some stuff now, but we still have the fatherland, our sovereignty". Later appropriated by anti-government people who realized that "having fatherland" is of little consolation when you have to queue for every foodstuff and toilet paper rolls, it soon become a sarcastic retort, as either a mocking answer ("I can't find meat nor cornmeal in the supermarket!" "Pero hay patria, amirite?") or as a Deadly Euphemism for being a crime victim ("On Saturday I was robbed at gun point and the thug then gunned me because he found my old cellphone lacking. I definitely got a big dose of Patria this weekend!"). Obviously, government officers soon began to declare this latter use as disrespectful, which only make the parodists use it that way even more. It climaxed with the creation of a short lived political web show indeed titled "Pero Tenemos Patria", who used their title as their Catch Phrase.
  48. ↑ Initially a hopeful, sincere phrase that emerged online circa early 2021, referring to the apparent recovery of Venezuelan economy after the humanitarian crisis of 2016-2018 brought economic migrants that sent American currency back to their relatives, and the USA sanctions against Venezuelan politicians and their families and relatives forced them to spend their ill-gotten money locally, often by funding "Bodegones" delicatessen stores that bring imported products somewhat alleviating the food scarcity. However, as the informal dolarization of the country has only make the gap between rich and poor even wider, the government attempts to regularize the foreign currency circulation and/or get profit of the new "wealth" are misfiring, the actual problems of the country (like criminality and lack of basic services) are not being addressed at all, and the COVID-19 crisis making the above even worse, the phrase has gotten a sarcastic meaning, now mostly used to mock both every bad thing that happens the country and the overly-optimistic people who used to say it without irony. At this point, the phrase is so overused it's approaching Discredited Meme status.
  49. ↑ They didn't, but don't let that stop the Pakistani press from saying that 6000 Jews working at the World Trade Center were late for work on 9/11.
  50. ↑ Apparently the Simon Wiesenthal Center thinks so. Hugo Chávez referred to his upper-class enemies as "Christ-killers" and "the ones who expelled Bolivar". Ironically, the regime that expelled Bolivar restarted the Spanish Inquisition.
  51. ↑ A stock near-Godwin's Law idea that one can just call one's opponent an antisemite to win an argument. At this point, 99% of accusations of antisemitism are done in cases where the subject didn't even relate to Jews, Israel, or Judaism.
  52. ↑ During the 2011 commission of inquiry into the signing of controversial memoranda of understanding with American law firm Manatt, Phelps and Phillips over the extradition of notorious drug don Christopher "Dudus" Coke, then-security minister Dwight Nelson was repeatedly grilled over his knowledge of events connected to the signing of the MO Us, which resulted from the security forces' incursion into Kingston that led to the deaths of 73 people in the effort to arrest Coke; for the majority of questions posed to Nelson, his response was "I can't recall." The phrase itself gained memetic status through reggae artiste Tony Rebel's song, aptly titled "I Can't Recall," and is now frequently utilized among Jamaicans to indicate they genuinely cannot remember some important detail.
  53. ↑ Originally used by social sciences experts as a way to point how certain people could have more social and cultural advantages ("privilege" in their lingo) that the rest of the population. It became memetic when SJW who had adopted the term jumped from applying it to the rich, WASPs and males to apply it to anyone who could have it slightly better than the rest for any reason (think "thin privilege", "age privilege", "passing privilege" and so on) as a way of terminate the conversation, and people tired of the nonsense began to use the phrase in mock and even throwing it back to SJW who happen to be "privileged" themselves.
  54. ↑ The concept of "trigger", an object or situation that can remind people with Post-Traumatic Disorder of their ordeals and evoke an emotional meltdown, is a legitimate thing, so in certain circles it became a common courtesy to place "trigger warning" to indicate that the following writing was dealing with explicit descriptions of traumatic situations (like describing a gruesome act of sexual abuse or the aftermath of a violent act), often in place of traditional "viewer/reader discretion advised" warnings. SJW, however, "expanded" the "trigger warning" definition to include mundane and vaguely uncomfortable stuff, to the point that it seemed to external observers that a person with so many "triggers" should be unable to function in society. Naturally, people satirizing SJW depict them as being melodramatically "triggered" by perfectly ordinary and even inoffensive stuff.
  55. ↑ Those innumerable activists and "climatologists" who loudly claim that unless peasants will cease to travel by anything more energetic than donkeys, the Earth is going to melt? In the everyday life they don't even bother to pretend they avoid things like gasoline-slurping air travel even if a chat or video conference would suffice. Many of them are frequent fliers, zipping between various conventions, summits and conferences all over the globe - quite often in nice tropical places, in a stark contrast to the desperation and panic they claim in press.
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