Culture

The US Speaker Of The House Just Attacked President Obama With Taylor Swift GIFs

#Tay4Prez2016

by Meg Watson  17 January 2015

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In case you didn’t already have enough crazy news about Taylor Swift this week, today the 65-year-old US House Speaker John Boehner — whose name isn’t pronounced like you think it is — posted an explosive political smackdown for the ages on his official government website entitled ’12 Taylor Swift GIFs For You’.

Intended as a reply to President Obama’s plan to offer free community college to many young Americans, the piece runs through the Republican’s arugments against the idea while explaining the issue to the Kids Of Today in the only way they understand: reaction GIFs.

The article — which was technically written by members of his communications staff Caleb Smith and Mike Ricci — issued incredibly inspired rejoinders like “Free?! Is he using magic money? Nothing is free” and at one point used a GIF of Taylor yelling and crying as an effective pictorial representation of “the tough economy”. But nothing quite matched the Democrats response.

HOW DID THEY NOT SEE THAT COMING?

Anyway, this is something the Republicans have apparently been doing a whole lot in recent times. On that same website, Boehner has similar posts titled ‘8 Shark GIFs That Perfectly Explain Why Senate Dems Can’t Ignore House Republicans‘ and ‘7 How I Met Your Mother GIFs That Perfectly Explain the U.S. Budget Process‘. The latter of which has unsurprisingly also featured in Buzzfeed‘s Community section.

For this and so many more painful reasons, Salon have even gone so far to anoint the Republicans “the party of the GIF”.

As you may have guessed from looking at any of our content, we love the intersection of pop culture and politics. More often than not, it’s a win-win situation. President Obama makes some fat jokes with Zach Galifianakis; young Americans learn a little more about their national healthcare system. Michelle Obama raps with a turnip; everyone gives one moment of their day to think about the importance of voting. They both know they’re being dorks. It’s for a good cause.

But when politicians start writing sassy listicles in lieu of genuine communication with young voters, it’s safe to say things have gone too far.

If you’d like some sad evidence of this happening in Australia, here’s a Buzzfeed Community listicle by the Victorian Liberal Party from last year’s election. It’s titled ‘The Truth About Daniel Andrews and Labour’ and it features GIFs from Modern Family, Mean Girls and Microsoft Office clip art. It did them absolutely zero favours in the election.

I think I speak for all of THE YOUTHS when I say we should just shut this shit down now.