Friday, 22 April 2022

Let's Go Brandon

"Make America Great Again" or MAGA have taken up a new chant .... the ironic 'Let's go, Brandon'.

The Event That Started The Brandon Chants
Let's Go Brandon!

However outside the US this reference is completely lost.

It stems from an October 2021 TV broadcast of a live post race NASCAR interview at Alabama's legendary Talladega Superspeedway track on NBC Sports channel, conducted by Kelli Stavast of winner Brandon Brown. During the interview part of the crowd started loudly chanting "Fuck Joe Biden", and this was being picked up on the TV broadcast.

Dropping the F-bomb is a very strict No No on US television and offending TV Stations can face very large fines. The FCC's website states that "Indecent and profane content are prohibited on broadcast TV and radio between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when there is a reasonable risk that children may be in the audience" .... so Ms Stavast gamely tried to pretend that the crowd were chanting "Let's go, Brandon," and asked the bemused driver about that ... 

"Brandon, you also told me — as you can hear the chants from the crowd, 'Let's go, Brandon' — Brandon, you told me you were gonna kinda hang back those first two stages and just watch and learn. What did you learn that helped you in those closing laps?"

However despite the track-side interview having nothing to do with politics, the reporter's attempt to move the interview along, fed into long held belief on the right, that the mainstream US media outlets are left-wing and support the Democrats agenda. So almost immediately they latched on to the chant as a prime example of media bias against conservatives.

So for example Ben Shapiro, a popular conservative podcast host and founder of the Daily Wire, captioned a Twitter screenshot on an article about the International Monetary Fund's assessment of inflation, with the legend 'Let's go, Brandon'.

"The chant is simply a hilarious recognition that a huge swath of the American people believe something the media simply are unable or unwilling to understand," he  stated in an email. "It underscores both general opposition to Biden's policies and the large-scale contempt the right has for a media infrastructure that ignores them or wilfully misinterprets them. It's a fantastic in-joke."

Let's Go Brandon Meme
Lets Go Brandon Memes Abound.


Also Donald Trump Jr. shared a meme featuring Biden and the Russian leader Vladimir Putin, with his 5.2 million Instagram followers. "Name's Joe but my friends call me Brandon," it said. Now its being seen all over the US including at other professional sporting events. It has also appeared on an air plane banner at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines Iowa for former President Donald Trump, even on a Fox News TV banner, and of course on numerous memes.

So now you know.

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