By The Daily Caller (Opinion) | Created at 2025-03-10 18:48:19 | Updated at 2025-03-11 00:28:49
6 hours ago
Leftists appear mystified by the J.D. Vance memes circulating on social media. The memes, which see the Vice President shapeshifted into rosy-cheeked variants of himself, have dominated X in recent weeks:
15 Vances that will change the way you think:
— Frasier Payne (@MeinGottNiles) March 4, 2025
The meme-cycle culminated Saturday with the Vice President’s own participation:
— JD Vance (@JDVance) March 8, 2025
But humor is hard. In a think piece for The Atlantic, journalist Ali Breland applied the full brunt of her analytical powers to understanding the “Unflattering J.D. Vance Memes.”
“Why is the right willing to make fun of one of its own with memes?” The intrepid journo pondered.
…Because it’s funny? (RELATED: The Best Memes Inspired By Tucker Carlson’s New Twitter Show | The Daily Caller)
Breland attempts psychological insight: “The Vance memes seem to contain an admission as well: that even some conservatives do not see him as essential to the current MAGA movement.”
At the risk of explaining the obvious, this is not what the Vance memes contain. The Vance memes contain the Vice President’s face superimposed onto babies and lions. One wonders whether Breland’s confusion can be attributed to her politics.
Kidding. Sort of.
Christopher Hitchens, an atheist from an era when “atheist” didn’t immediately prompt associations with fat, fedora-tipping subterraneans, posited an explanation from evolutionary psychology: Men are funny because they “damn well better be” in order to impress women. Women have recourse to … other charms, Hitchens suggested.
At the time of writing “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” Hitchens was one of the left’s most vaunted humorists. In 2007, liberals enjoyed a reputation as the coalition of the fun, edgy, young.
Eighteen years later, Hitchens is dead and the left can’t meme. What happened?
The simple explanation is: The left is on estrogen therapy.
That is to say, in the eighteen years since Hitchens wrote “Why Women Aren’t Funny,” his former coalition has become feminized. “The future is female,” crowed the Clinton campaign. Certainly, this is true of the future of the Democrat Party, which has adopted the attitude and tone of a middle-school teacher clucking at her rowdy pupils.
As Hitchens explains, “Male humor prefers the laugh to be at someone’s expense, and understands that life is quite possibly a joke to begin with—and often a joke in extremely poor taste.”
Men, and women with adequate self-esteem, don’t mind when the expense is charged to their account. Leftist identity-politics hallows the Black, the Gay, the Female. None are to be blasphemed. Even, or especially, for the sake of humor. (RELATED: Twitter Troll Slapped With Prison Sentence Over Misleading Election Memes | The Daily Caller)
This isn’t to say Democrats haven’t tried. Not very successfully, per the results of the 2024 election.
Kamala’s “brat summer” emanated a nuclear cringe. Many wished a well-timed coconut would permanently concuss that period of political maneuvering from memory. Kamala’s running mate received similarly astroturfed efforts from Lefty twitter. And, in a recent video, Democrats bobbed to TikTok music as bullet points of their superheroic traits flashed on-screen:
DANCING DEMOCRATS:
Our elected officials need to spend less time making meme videos and more time working on behalf of the American People…
This is ridiculous. pic.twitter.com/jAMmyVFVOT
— Anthony Hughes (@CallMeAntwan) March 6, 2025
Note each woman took the video as an opportunity to praise herself. Democrats, or the zoomer staffers managing their social media accounts, can ape the format of viral memes. But their religious devotion to “The Message” obstructs any laughs.
Follow Natalie Sandoval on X: @NatalieIrene03
