Politicians fall asleep.
They also receive public scorn because nothing spells contempt for the public’s concerns rather than yawning and slumbering.
The job of politicians demands that shut-eye not happen when they are essential public servants.
After the chronic snoozer Democratic Representative Jerry Nadler of New York was discovered dozing off on the job once again (while the public was footing the bill), he became the target of ridicule on social media.
The professional politician, 75 years old, was observed snoozing at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee. The hearing was headlined “Oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.” Perhaps they should have called it Oversight of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, Explosives, and Pillows.
A permanent meme was born when the then 81-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg was caught on tape apparently nodding off during Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address (who could honestly blame her?). A formal photo of the SCOTUS depicted Ginsburg with her head slumped over in a deep sleep.
And following an incident in which he appeared to nod off while attending the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Joe Biden, the President of the United States, was given the online moniker “Sleepy Joe.”
Trump uses it; perhaps he even coined it.
In the age when a meme will travel faster than your ability to do damage control, no one leverages behaviors against their political opponents better than Donald Trump.
Trump’s ability to fuel memes and nicknames toward his foes is unparalleled. His problem with Biden is that there is way too much material to work with.
A study published in the Journal of Political Marketing attempted to answer this question of Trump’s nickname effectiveness.
In the 48 hours following the Republican National Convention in 2020, the poll asked 674 participants to think of nicknames that Trump had given Biden in the past.
The findings revealed that only 37% of participants had a correct memory of any of them.
It doesn’t matter. To the 37%, they are gold. Whether they remember the monikers or not, more than 37% look forward to the next scathing nickname authored by Trump.
