"Thanks, Great Baby!": A government Twitter account is promoting baby safety with terrifying memes
Throughout history there are stories of men and women who, when faced with the decision to resign from their posts within a government grown rotten, opted to remain and subversively help where they could from inside the belly of the beast. We haven’t heard many of those stories from within the Trump administration so far (and no, that one time doesn’t count), but perhaps that’s because it’s too soon to learn of these acts of quiet heroism. We were reminded today, however, of one shining beacon of light from within the darkened halls of Washington—the United States Consumer Product Safety Commission’s social media department.
For a few years, the USCPSC’s Twitter page has been a font of bizarro, absurdist PSAs that make one wonder, “Who among this wretched Administration still possesses a sense of humor?” or perhaps,“Is Horse e_books working for a government pension now?” The latest examples come from the USCPSC’s “Baby Safety Month,” which is apparently a thing that just wrapped up.
Oh, it gets weirder. Here’s a bird named “Handsome Ron” wearing a sunbonnet reminding us to “always lay your baby down to sleep on their back.”
And check out this collection of “Great Baby” images from the past few weeks, which features a big floating baby in the sky reiterating various safety measures to keep in mind when caring for infants.
Here’s one we think is meant to reference Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld and/or ancient myths about the world being carried on the back of a turtle and supported by elephants…
Again, we swear to you this is a real, verified governmental social media account, apparently run by some poor bastard probably wracked with guilt about their arguable complicity in various crimes against humanity. Or just a Nazi who unfortunately loves Tim and Eric.
Perhaps 60-ish years from now we’ll watch a critically acclaimed historical drama within our cool, futuristic VR pornography capsules home entertainment systems centered on someone who bravely answered the cry of humanity from deep within this cruel and evil era. There’ll probably be some emotionally climactic scene when that person is faced with the true weight of their decisions and actions, and maybe they’ll cry out in remorse,“I could have meme’ed more!…I could have meme’ed more!” before being stoically reassured by a hologram Ben Kingsley that their work meant more than they could possibly imagine…