It’s a well-known fact that liberalism and comedy aren’t a good mix. Witness Hannah Gadsby. Or most of Saturday Night Live‘s recent output. Or any of the current crop of late-night show hosts.
The same goes for the various departments of the Biden administration. Case in point: this doozy of a meme that the Department of Transportation recently tweeted.
😊🙌🙌👩✈️👨🏭👩🔧👷♀️👷 pic.twitter.com/vBVanOBCuK
— TransportationGov (@USDOT) November 26, 2021
In case they have the good sense to take it down, here it is:
If you don’t get it, it’s okay. There’s nothing to get other than the leftist talking point.
I’m not sure what we’re supposed to call the diametric opposite of comedy gold, but this is it. This meme is an affront to comedy. It’s neither cute nor funny, and it’s certainly not clever. There’s no original thought to it whatsoever, and the only thing revelatory about it is how slavishly devoted the left always is to The Narrative™.
In other words, this in no way resembles comedy.
Whoever developed this meme and posted it on the Department of Transportation’s Twitter account should have his or her password privileges revoked. I almost picture Pete Buttigieg himself sitting in front of his copy of Photoshop smiling smugly and saying to himself, “All my friends are gonna love this!”
As my PJ Media colleague Stacey Lennox so wisely put it, “The left can’t meme. We all know this.”
And don’t get me started on the ridiculous claim that the infrastructure bill and Build Back Better will combine like the Wonder Twins to “create millions of new jobs.” (Besides, one of the Wonder Twins always turned into a bucket of water, which definitely won’t help.)
No government program has lived up to that promise — other than maybe some New Deal stuff — so why would we expect these two legislative winners to do the same?
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But it gets better. Or worse, if you’re part of the Biden administration’s DOT.
Some people are accusing the DOT of improperly lobbying with a lame Twitter post. The Twittersphere and others are concerned that the meme may violate the Hatch Act.
Why is an official government Twitter account making propaganda memes to support an infrastructure bill from the sitting president? https://t.co/ytystjPcaM
— Cameron Dixon 🪓💀🪶 (@praxisofman) November 27, 2021
The meme was criticized by many online from those who didn’t find it funny as well as from those who suggested the department had improperly lobbied for specific legislation, in this case the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better bill being debated in Congress.
“This appears to be lobbying,” former California Assemblyman and Vice-President of the Texas Public Policy Foundation tweeted. “I didn’t think federal agencies were allowed to be so blatant in promoting specific legislation. The Secretary of Transportation can, of course, but the DOT’s official website? Seems unusual.”
The Hatch Act specifically prohibits agencies and government employees from lobbying in favor of legislation that is before Congress or using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.” There haven’t been any formal complaints about the tweet as of this writing, but that doesn’t mean that someone won’t file one soon.
The Biden administration should be familiar with what constitutes a violation of the Hatch Act. Not too long ago, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was accused of a Hatch Act violation when she spoke in favor of Terry McAuliffe in Virginia’s gubernatorial election. After the complaint was lobbied against her, she said she had “learned [her] lesson” and vowed to “choose [her] words more carefully.”
Here’s hoping that the Department of Transportation will choose its tweets more carefully, especially if the agency winds up in hot water over the poorly-chosen post.
Unfortunately, there’s no Hatch Act for violations against comedy. If there were, Pete Buttigieg and his Department of Transportation Twitter account would be in all sorts of trouble.
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