6 Blatant Attempts To Stir Up Completely Unfounded Outrage

Kehinde Wiley/National Portrait GalleryDid Obama Get There's Something About Mary-ed by a giant?

Once people pointed out that this was dumb even for Hannity, he deleted the tweet and claimed it was staffers who sent it. But the powerful eroticism wasn't Hannity's only problem with the painting. He also claimed it was "inappropriate," given all of the other presidential portraits' austere nature. Like other commentators, he was upset that Obama had a portrait worthy of a freshman dorm room when all the other presidential portraits are dull, dignified affairs.

But if they'd taken 15 minutes to research the issue, they'd have discovered this portrait was meant to hang at the Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, not the White House. The portraits there follow a long tradition of more creatively flexible work. It's typical for presidents to pick an artist they like and let them go nuts. For instance, here is FDR's wacky portrait:

National Portrait GalleryHe was well-known for his collection of disembodied hands.

And JFK's:

National Portrait GalleryThe artist painted it in the middle of having sex with JFK.

And Bill Clinton's:

National Portrait GalleryBack when "applying a Photoshop filter" counted as art.

The Mary Sue

The Mary Sue"What would George Lucas and his African-American wife say?!"

You may notice that most of those tweets are from the same guy. That's because that was pretty much the entire "social media movement" -- a handful of dickheads trying to get a rise out of people. Mashable estimates that 94 percent of tweets using the hashtag were mocking the "boycott." A more accurate headline would have been "Like Four People Are Racist, Rest Of Twitter Gives Them The Attention Their Parents Did Not." Regardless, so many news sources covered the "boycott" that director J.J. Abrams felt compelled to address it in a tweet -- which the original trolls passed around as some sort of trophy. Good job, internet! We gave these sad sacks the happiest day of their miserable lives.

On the upside, at least it's not like we keep falling for the exact same shit every single goddamn year.

If you're not outraged yet, Fox News wants you to consider one thing: The company releasing this game is (*gasp*) French.

Fox News

Fox News"Couldn't they wait for a more appropriate holiday, like Imagine The President Is A King And You Kill Him Day?" (March 22nd)

Never mind that this is an "it was all a dream" scenario, and the main story shows Washington in a positive light. The important thing is that you get mad and go burn a croissant or something.

Hilariously enough, Fox News was so alone in their faux outrage that they couldn't even get the people who work at George Washington's Mount Vernon Estate to condemn the game. They also interviewed a gamer who had "not yet viewed the game," so they might as well have asked the studio's janitor. Of course, none of this stopped the kind of people who hang out in Fox News' comments section from filling their diapers. Male-oriented religious website BroBible compiled some of the worst examples:

BroBibleIf they go more than six comments without someone mentioning Obama, Fox News has to fire its entire staff.

This was cleared up in 1994, and yet the story will not die. During the 2016 Brexit referendum, London Mayor Boris Johnson claimed in a major speech that "it is absolutely crazy that the EU is telling us what shape our bananas have got to be." That relentless commitment to facts recently landed him the foreign secretary job.

Christopher Furlong/Getty ImagesReal photo or Arrested Development screengrab?

Cabinet member and former Conservative Party leader Ian Duncan-Smith also referenced "bent bananas" as a benefit of leaving the EU, while European Parliament member Dan Hannan once wrote to the European Commission demanding to know why they kept denying they had ever banned curvy bananas. Turns out it was because they hadn't. Go figure.

As late as 2017, The Daily Telegraph published an editorial calling on Theresa May to get rid of useless EU regulations like the banana ban. Nobody's coming for your bananas, Britain!

Let us begin:

In 2011, the U.S. inspector general released a report stating that the Justice Department had spent $16 per muffin at a law enforcement conference, and the media immediately went berserk. Senators were calling for resignations. Fox News' Bill O'Reilly called it "a symbol of how wasteful the feds are with our tax dollars," and accused Obama of craving more muffin money. Others were simply perplexed as to how one would even make a $16 muffin. How did the government think they could get away with this?

CBS NewsPerhaps it's a filet mignon muffin?

Well, maybe because it wasn't true. It took the hotel chain three days to clear up the mess, by explaining that the $16 price tag in fact paid for a full continental breakfast, including "fresh fruit, coffee, tea, soft drinks, tax, and tips." They only invoiced it as "muffins" because it was a shorter description, and the half-stoned waiter who keyed it in probably didn't think the bill would be scrutinized on television for several days. The inspector general was forced to retract and revise his department's initial audit, and the media moved on.

Or at least they would have in a sane world.

According to a LexisNexis search, of the 223 stories covering "Muffingate" in the first week, 178 didn't include the correction. Of those stories, 36 were published after the audit was revised, and they still didn't bother to explain the mistake. Let's just be thankful they weren't banana muffins, or this could have turned into a serious international incident.

Steven Assarian is a librarian. He writes stuff here. Zanandi is on Twitter. Wes Corwin is a stand-up comedian currently based in Dallas. You can like him on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, or if you live in Dallas and enjoy comedy and alcohol, check out his weekly show at Noble Rey Brewery on Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. He also has a Real Rob fan podcast called When Keeping It Real Goes Rob, which has more listeners than it should.

Celebrate the lack of sanity in today's media by munching on a bag of Doritos. Just do it.

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For more, check out Internet Outrage Is Beginning To Hurt Its Own Cause and 5 Ways To Stay Sane In An Era Of Non-Stop Outrage.

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