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The face that launched a thousand memes could put you on the first boat home
I have a very important public service announcement to make. Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, make fun of Vice-President JD Vance by sharing one of the millions of unflattering memes dedicated to him. Don’t you dare chuckle at the images of him looking like the “lollipop kid” in Shrek (the resemblance is uncanny) or a chicken nugget. And, whatever you do, do not share the meme that you can find here, where he looks like a big bald baby. You risk hurting the poor man’s feelings and, also, you might get kicked out of the country.
So says a 21-year-old Norwegian called Mads Mikkelsen, anyway. Mikkelsen recently accused American border officials of denying him entry into the US because he had a meme of a bloated baby Vance saved on his phone. Mikkelsen, who had travelled to the US to visit friends, told the Norwegian paper Nordlys that immigration officers at Newark airport interrogated him, forced him to give fingerprints and blood samples, and went through his phone. After they found the Vance meme, as well as a picture of Mikkelsen holding a homemade wooden pipe, they sent him home.
“Both pictures had been automatically saved to my camera roll from a chat app, but I really didn’t think that these innocent pictures would put a stop to my entry into the country,” Mikkelsen told Nordlys.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has rejected Mikkelsen’s claim that he was kicked out of the country for disrespecting the vice-president. “FACT CHECK. Claims that Mads Mikkelsen was denied entry because of a meme are unequivocally FALSE,” they posted on Facebook earlier in the week. “TRUTH: Mikkelsen was refused entry into the US for his admitted drug use.”
A homeland security assistant secretary, Tricia McLaughlin, also called the story “BS” in a post on X.
Mikkelsen, meanwhile, insisted to the fact-checking website Snopes that the meme played a role in getting him denied entry. The 21-year-old claimed border officials told him he was getting sent home because of “extremist propaganda [the meme] and narcotic paraphernalia”. However, that claim hasn’t been verified.
We may never know if the Vance meme really did play a role in getting Mikkelsen kicked out of the country. While I don’t normally side with border officials, one imagines the pipe picture was probably the actual culprit. Still, the story, which made headlines around the world, won’t help America’s tourism industry. International visitors are staying out of the US after a spate of stories about tourists getting sent to Ice detention centers without any explanation. The World Travel & Tourism Council has said the country could lose $12.5bn in international visitor spending this year.
The story has also reignited interest in JD Vance memes, which have been circulating for months now, peaking at end of February after the vice-president scolded Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an exchange that launched a million memes. Indeed, the Irish lawmaker Ivana Bacik recently held up the Vance baby meme while speaking in the Irish parliament about the Mikkelsen story.
While claims that making fun of Mr Hillbilly Elegy may get you deported might be exaggerated, the fact that so many people immediately believed Mikkelsen’s claims is a sign of just how badly the US’s international image has been damaged and how dystopian the country has become. The US is heading very quickly towards authoritarianism. It is cracking down on dissent and protest. Book banning has surged and the Trump administration has instructed the Department of Education to end their investigations into these bans, calling them a “hoax”. Free speech rights are being shredded.
And the people responsible for all this? They’re not evil geniuses, they’re embarrassing dweebs with massively meme-able faces. “I knew that one day we might have to watch as capitalism and greed and bigotry led to a world where powerful men, deserving or not, would burn it all down,” Rebecca Shaw said in a Guardian piece earlier this year. “What I didn’t expect, and don’t think I could have foreseen, is how incredibly cringe it would all be.”
Immigrants in the US are worried about getting deported if they report domestic violence
“The Alliance for Immigrant Survivors, a national network of advocates for those hurt by domestic violence, found that 75% of the 170 advocates they surveyed across the country said the immigrants they serve fear they’ll face arrest or deportation if they contact authorities,” reports USA Today. Meanwhile the Fox News host Jesse Waters seems to think all this is hilarious. “I bet a bunch of guys that are dating illegal alien Spanish girls are like Ice, here’s the address! She hasn’t been very good,” Watters recently said. In related news, a man was recently arrested for allegedly impersonating an Ice officer and sexually assaulting a woman, saying he’d deport her if she didn’t comply.
Nato chief says he doesn’t actually consider Trump ‘Daddy’
Mark Rutte made a weird statement in which he referred to Trump as ‘Daddy’ and then quickly walked it back.
Michigan lawmaker says he doesn’t support a woman’s autonomy over her own body
Speaking at an office hours event, the Michigan representative Karl Bohnak (a Republican), said “I don’t” after a constituent asked him, “So you don’t support a woman’s autonomy over her own body?”
Supreme court paves way for red states to defund Planned Parenthood
The case, Medina v Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, “is part of a longstanding effort by anti-abortion activists to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood by cutting it out of Medicaid”, the Guardian reports. “Of the 2.4 million people treated at Planned Parenthood each year, almost half use Medicaid.”
Armenia’s prime minister offers to show his penis to religious leader
The prime minister, Nikol Pashinyan, told his Facebook followers that he was prepared to expose himself to the head of the Armenian church, to prove they were wrong that he had been circumcised. This is just the latest development in an ongoing spat between Pashinyan and the head of the Armenian Apostolic church. And they say women are too emotional to lead!
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A best-selling videogame called Revenge on Gold Diggers is causing controversy in China
As the title suggests, the game involves a male protagonist who is looking to get revenge on “gold-digging” women. After a lot of controversy it’s been renamed Emotional Fraud Simulator, but the content is the same.
Son of Norway’s crown princess charged with rape and sexual assault
“I cannot go into further detail about the number of victims in the case beyond confirming that it is a double-digit number,” the Oslo police attorney said.
New Golden Bachelor says he doesn’t want to date women his own age
Mel Owens, a 66-year-old former NFL player, who is the new star of ABC’s senior-focused dating show, has said he is only looking to date women between 45 and 60. “If they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them.’”
Dozens of people attend Hetero Awesome Fest in Idaho
The handful of attenders included a local podcast host who praised the city’s lack of Black residents.
A judge who resisted Trump’s executive order on gender identity just got fired
“[A] job title isn’t everything, and it’s more important to stay true to your values,” Judge Karen Ortiz, who worked in the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s New York office, said.
New Zealand is the best place in the world to have herpes
That’s according to a brilliant advertising campaign which aimed to destigmatise herpes via a spoof tourism advertisement.
Israeli soldiers killed at least 410 people at food aid sites in Gaza this month
Israeli officers and soldiers said that they were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians waiting for humanitarian aid, Haaretz reports.
The week in pawtriarchy
Here’s something to mews about: is it disgusting to kiss your partner after kissing your cat? You still have time to vote on this very im-paw-tant question via a Guardian poll.
