It started out innocently enough. Ken Klippenstein was enjoying a long Memorial Day weekend and decided it was time to pull what appears to be his yearly prank. Then, what to his wondering eyes did he see but a joke gone viral in a most amazing way.
The reporter for The Intercept was just having a little fun on Twitter among friends. He sent Florida Representative Matt Gaetz a little tweet declaring a heritage that was not his to keep:
‘Congressman, my grandpa’s a big fan of yours and is a veteran, he would be thrilled if you could RT this photo of him for Memorial Day. Here he is as a young Private First Class.
‘Happy Memorial Day.
No, Lee Harvey Oswald, when he saw President John F. Kennedy, decided to assassinate. And Ken punked the poor little rich representative Matt Gaetz.
Gaetz (R-FL) did not find the trick funny. He would rather (allegedly) transport an underage girl across state lines and end up in court.
So, Gaetz scooped up Klippenstein’s tweet never imagining that he had picked up, retweeted, and handed the laughing reporter this words:
‘Wow [Ken Klippenstein] it’s my honor to retweet the photo of a veteran on a day we remember his fallen friends. God bless your grandfather.’
All three men deleted their posts, but alas it was too late. But the fallout could not be beat. Conservative commentator and founder of @BLEXITorganization, Candace Owens sent out this tweet:
‘It is not “political correctness” to have a soul and a modicum of decency. Reminder: These men died—the majority of them on foreign soil—so that you could be free. You do not photoshop murderers into their uniforms so that you can have a laugh.’
But she made a major mistake. She thought that Klippenstein photoshopped Oswald’s picture onto another soldier’s uniform. Actually, he was a veteran on bake:
‘[Candace Owens] thinks [Ken Klippenstein] photoshopped the face of Lee Harvey Oswald onto a man in uniform, not knowing Oswald was actually a veteran and that the picture was him in uniform.’
Thee Anthony Fantano was delighted to get some “Candice Owen’s entertainment” oh so fine. He retweeted Ken Klippenstein:
‘I can’t believe Candice Owens give out this entertainment for free!’
Well, Klippenstein stuck his tongue well into his cheek and tweeted his sorrow that she was not all that sweet:
‘Candace has treated me very badly!’
His prank started trending to beat the band. He could not believe it, “this is getting out of hand:”
‘Ok this is getting out of hand lol’
American Conservative Union Chair Matt Schlapp soon jumped into the fray and tweeted:
‘Happy Memorial Day!’
Not waiting to pile on, Florida Republican Representative Anthony Sabatini dove right in claiming something about ignoring reason. “[I]f we ignore the reasons WHY they fought and died, we are…” Are what? In the holiday season?
Ken Klippenstein got a nationwide grin out of his joke on the three: Matt, Sclapp, and old Sabatini. He wrote with a flourish and declared with a grin, “Happy Memorial Day” to all and a good night, my friend:
But the joke was not over. Senior Editor at The Bulwark Online Jim Swift noticed that an unwitting Ben Shapiro also followed the Republican lemmings off that great cliff:
‘Can’t use the Google to learn that Lee Harvey Oswald was actually in the USMC and not photoshopped.’
Klippenstein retweeted a clever reply, this was not a time machine and turkeys cannot fly:
Editor at Large for The Daily Beast, Mollie Jong-Fast added her comment about what Klippenstein meant:
‘And @kenlippenstein brought back Lee Havey Oswald into the zeitgeist’
Ken Klippenstein joked that Gaetz could not even be a Google sleuth. The “result” instead was:
‘Fired for truth!!!!’
That joke went far and wide, because it was oh so fine. Thank you, you prankster Ken Klippenstein.
Three White Lions podcast, Gloria Christie reads her week’s most important news/ commentary stories in the liberal online newspaper The Bipartisan Report. Gloria Christie Report her newsletter for people on the go. Written in her own unique style with a twist of humor in a briefer version of Bipartisan Report. Christie’s Mueller Report Adventures In Bite-Sizes a real-life compelling spy mystery. Find her here on Facebook.
