Following actor Clint Eastwood’s provocative presentation at the Republican National Convention last week, the “empty chair” metaphor has taken on a life of its own, symbolizing the Obama administration’s failure to fulfill the “hope and change” expectations of the 2008 presidential campaign.
Eastwood’s prime-time act featured a mock conversation with Obama, who was represented by an empty chair.
Perhaps one of the more humorous examples of the empty-chair meme circulating on the Internet is a photograph of Karl Marx that serves as “proof” Obama met the author of “The Communist Manifesto.”
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As seen in Exhibit 1, the proof turns out to be a studio photograph of Marx with his left hand resting on the back of an empty chair.
The Hill’s “Twitter Room” noted that Obama opponents on Twitter had dubbed Sept. 3 as “National Empty Chair Day,” supported with a “National Empty Chair Day” site on Facebook, as seen in Exhibit 2.
A.F. Branco at LegalInsurrection.com created a logo for “National Empty Chair Day,” posted with the encouragement “free to use,” as seen below in Exhibit 3.
The National Empty Chair Day was subtitled “Eastwooding Obama” in a page created on Facebook that currently has over 75,000 “invites,” as seen in Exhibit 4.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has doubled down, posting on Twitter the image of an empty child booster seat mounted on a wooden adult chair, as seen in Exhibit 5.
Under #EmptyChairDay, a host of photos were posted on Twitter, including a Photoshopped image of U.S. troops in a helicopter ferrying an empty chair, as seen in Exhibit 6.
Another Twitter empty chair post, as seen in Exhibit 7, targeted Solyndra, the bankrupt “green” energy company that received federal loan guarantees that, the Romney campaign charged, amounted to “crony capitalism.”
TheConservativeTreeHouse.com has a series of humorous empty chair images, as seen in the following exhibits:
HillBuzz.com got into the act, with Kevin DuJan posting as the “Winner, Hands Down, Best of Meme” an image of “Obama’s Empty Chair on Mount Rushmore,” as seen in Exhibit 11.
The empty chair image inspired a YouTube video musically mocking Obama for his reputation for golfing in preference to focusing on unemployment and economic recovery.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUjmt3oUQnI&feature=player_detailpage
Now, with the decision of the Democratic Party to move Obama’s DNC acceptance speech from the 74,000-seat Bank of America stadium in Charlotte to the much smaller convention site, “Empty Chair Day” has morphed into “Empty Stadium Day” on Twitter, given momentum by the Weather Channel predicting a zero chance of rain at the scheduled time of Obama’s speech.
