A Meme Thing To Do

That's going to leave a mark.

Initially we hadn't given much thought to the whole brouhaha in which Trump tweeted (sigh...) an animated GIF of him pretending to rough up someone with a CNN logo for a face. It was a dopey little animation which sort of made a humorous point, after which we could all just get on with our lives - right?

Wrong. The media and Internet went nuts (granted, this is a given these days), making an occurrence which had roughly the importance of a gnat's fart into a bigger story than the lunatic leader of North Korea successfully test firing a nuke-capable ICBM missile.

CNN was especially culpable in blowing the loco logo story out of proportion. They claimed that the seconds-long clip was a call for violence against their esteemed journalistic team, and then tracked down the poor schmuck who'd originally created the animation and threatened to out his real identity (after labeling him a racist and anti-semite) so that the angry leftist mobs - you know, the ones who commit real acts of violence - could deal with him.

This is no small thing, as conservative cartoonist (and personal friend) Mike Lester points out...

The Right, of course, responded with a tidal wave of new memes (including our winged-hat tip to Thor and Hulk) in which CNN was humorously and entirely metaphorically getting the stew beaten out of them.

These weren't "calls for violence," but rather a perfect Free Speech counterattack in defense of a private citizen whose rights and safety were being threatened by a mega-media corporation that can't take a joke - even though it is one.