We all know that memes can be hilarious and can often involve pop culture icons and celebrities. Whether it’s about Leonardo DiCaprio, Keanu Reeves, Ryan Gosling, or other known individuals, people surely love their memes. One of the most recent ones to take the Internet world by storm doesn’t feature a movie celebrity or musician. Rather, it’s an innocent photo (don’t they always start out like that?) featuring US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton simply sitting in a military plane wearing her sunglasses and typing away on her mobile device.
With such an iconic photo of the Secretary of State being published, there’s going to be someone that will make it into a popular meme. And that’s exactly what Stacy Lambe and Adam Smith did when they created the pop culture hit Texts From Hillary. The premise? Simple…just take the famous photo of Mrs. Clinton looking at her phone, add in another fun photo of another individual doing something on their phone and then come up with a crazy and funny story. That’s it! So far, some of the submissions have been memes featuring the Secretary with known individuals like disgraced politician Anthony Weiner, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Huffington Post’s Arianna Huffington, Vice-President Joe Biden, Jon Stewart, Meryl Streep, Rachel Maddow, Mitt Romney, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Ryan Gosling, and many others.
It should be noted that the original photograph wasn’t taken recently–in fact it was snapped in October 2011 and only within the past few weeks has this become a hit photo. Whether you’re talking about Mrs. Clinton’s powerful stature as she sits in a military plane doing work while her staff works behind her or that she looks pretty cool and emotes a sense of confidence or maybe she just looks badass–the fact is that it’s one great photo. And as a result, you get some really awesome meme covers. Perhaps one of the most hilarious ones has got to be with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and the Secretary (see image on the left)–there are definitely more and you can view them on the Tumblr blog.
So with all this hilarity, one might wonder whether or not the subject of these memes actually pays attention to them or completely ignores them because they might consider it just plain nonsense. Well, we can’t really say about the other memes, but earlier this week, news broke that Mrs. Clinton is paying attention and, not only that, submitted her own contribution to the Tumblr blog! As it turns out, the site’s creators received a submission sent by Secretary Clinton and even sent an autographed version of her submission to them–she signed it as:
Adam–
Thanks for the many LOLz.
Hillary “Hillz”
Needless to say, both Mr. Lambe and Smith were a bit surprised to receive the submission. In fact, they’re quoted as saying:
“We didn’t even believe it at first,” said Smith. “Stacy and I IMed each other at the same time, basically saying, ‘Oh my god, this email!‘”
As they told Mashable, “Her staff reached out to us with the submission yesterday. And we just met with her this afternoon. She was very delightful and thought kindly of us. I can tell you , her staff thought the whole thing was great.” Now how awesome is that to poke fun at one of the most powerful people in the world and have them laugh at what was being done and join in on the fun?
So what happens now that the subject of the meme has found out that there is a meme? Is there anything more creative that can be done? Sure, there’s more photos to doctor up and have fun with–I’m sure that the Texts from Hillary photos won’t go away anytime soon–in fact, more and more photos will grace our presence through social networks like Twitter and Facebook. But for the Tumblr blog, looks like the site’s creators have decided to call it quits. In their post, they announce that after 32 hilarious posts, 83,000 shares on Facebook, 8,400 Twitter followers, and over 45,000 Tumblr followers, along with “news stories, Renee Montagne from Morning Edition saying ‘ROFL’, a Maureen Dowd column, and a tweet from ?uestLove“, they’d rather quit while they’re ahead. They don’t believe that it’s possible to top a submission that would be as great or greater than the one given to them by the source of the meme. So like the hilarious Hitler videos, you can expect that the Hillary meme will stick around for a lot longer and help create something really hilarious and amusing.
Photo Credit: The original photo that started the meme was taken on October 18, 2011 by Diana Walker at the start of a week long trip through the middle east. In the photo Hillary Clinton checks her PDA, in her sunglasses, upon departure in a military plane from Malta, bound for Tripoli. Taken from TIME.
