"Tell me about the social media meme that's just different images of JD Vance."

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok.

From the answer: "This phenomenon has gained massive traction as of early March 2025.... The meme trend kicked off in earnest around October 2024, when an X user posted an edited image of Vance with slightly rounder cheeks, captioning it, 'For every 100 likes, I will turn J.D. Vance into a progressively apple-cheeked baby.'... What’s notable is the meme’s bipartisan appeal.... Vance himself has weighed in.... As of today, March 8, 2025, the JD Vance meme shows no signs of fading...."

pic.twitter.com/rPloNGHLej

— JD Vance (@JDVance) March 8, 2025

ADDED: That image relies on the Leonardo DiCaprio "Pointing Meme":

Antic grotesquerie.

I'd thought this morning was the first time I'd ever used the word "grotesquerie" on this blog. I was talking about the female Olympics figure skaters. But no, back in 2014, I wrote of "the grotesquerie of politicians finding love with the Hollywood stars." I did not like seeing Leonardo DiCaprio and John Kerry locked in embrace.

But it felt new. I even looked it up in the OED to see if it counted as an English word (because if it were only a foreign-language word, I'd have put it in italics). Yes, it's English. They were saying it back in 1655:

1655    Ld. Orrery Parthenissa IV.  ii. vi. 536   In a large Compartiment compos'd of Groteskery were seene Sphynxes, Harpyes, the Clawes of Lyons, and Tygres, to evidence, that within, inhabited Misteries, and Riddles.

Of course, "grotesquerie" is just a noun version of "grotesque," and I got sidetracked into the original meaning of "grotesque": "A kind of decorative painting or sculpture, consisting of representations of portions of human and animal forms, fantastically combined and interwoven with foliage and flowers." 

"Has political satire lost its power? Or has reality become so absurd that it’s now beyond parody?"

That's from the intro to "Why Are People So Mad About Don’t Look Up? Climate change is a tough subject for any film, let alone a satire."

It's a podcast — audio and transcript at the link — with various Atlantic staff people (Kevin Townsend, Sophie Gilbert, David Sims, and Spencer Kornhaber). I have seen the movie, by the way.

I think the quote I put in the post title is trite and foolish. The difference between the present and the past is the present is where you're living now. It's self-involved to believe that in the past, you could do parody and satire, but now — now! — things are already so absurd that there's nothing to add, no way to exaggerate, and we're suffering in some extreme new way that makes comedy impossible.

But let's see what these people have to say:

Can they make up Leonardo DiCaprio to look like Jonah Goldberg and have Meryl Streep as the female Trump?

Yes and yes. Here, see for yourself: