Anatomy Of A Meme

By Kleinheider Posted on August 31, 2008 at 8:46 pm

Jackson Baker on how “the talk” gets started:

Those that hit and make a lasting impact are generally those that are well targeted. Clinton of the loose zipper and Dan “Mr. Potatoe” Quayle of the anti-gravity brain are cases in point. (Warren G. Harding, he of the ‘normalcy’ neologism, qualified in both those categories.)

“Mythologies,” we said a few lines back. To call something a “myth” doesn’t belie it. Ask Carl Jung. (OK, his ghost.) But political memes, like some myths, can start out as malicious (or self-serving) fabrications or as the careless templates of a lazy press pack.

“Mean Bob Dole,” a truly bizarre way to tag an exemplar of both wit and warmth, was a clear case of the latter, while “Al Gore the Inventor of the Internet” ended up as a press meme but started out at some V-2 base near Peenemunde. The pedigree of “Barack Obama the celebrity” was similar.

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