Those Walz-Vance memes? Credit Chuck Norris.
They’re a figure of thought that deserves its own eponym. Call it “norrissing.”
Democrats are labeling Tim Walz and JD Vance with a snarky glee that in the past had been reserved only for female politicians. (Remember Sarah Palin seeing Russia?) The memes cranked up almost as soon as the running mates hit the trail.
Tim Walz is the guy who tells a funny joke at a party. JD Vance is the guy who opens your medicine cabinet.
Tim Walz is the guy who thinks 10-year-olds should get school lunches. JD Vance is the guy who thinks 10-year-olds have to carry a baby to term.
Tim Walz is the guy that helps you fix your car. JD Vance is the guy who tells you that you can’t park there when it breaks down.
Tim Walz is the type of guy you would ask to walk you home after a late class. JD Vance is the reason you need to ask Tim Walz to walk you home after a late class.
Way down the mean-meme scale, the New Yorker recently memeified Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa:
“She’s the aunt that everybody wishes they had,” Kerry Diamond, the founder of the food magazine Cherry Bombe, said. “She’s funny. She’s rich. She’ll let you eat the chocolate cake your mother said you couldn’t have.”
If it weren’t for Chuck Norris, I doubt these memes would ever have approached orbital velocity. Carlos Ray Norris, for those of you whippersnappers who strangely have not heard of him, is a martial artist who gained fame for showing off his awesome fighting skills and his acting, uh, work in the seventies through the nineties. Norris’s pugilistic artistry coincided with the dawn of the Internet, which quickly apotheosized him into a surly deity.
When God said, “Let there be light!” Chuck Norris said, “Say Please.”
Chuck Norris' tears cure cancer. Too bad he has never cried.
Chuck Norris drinks napalm to fight his heartburn.
Chuck Norris counted to infinity... twice.
Chuck Norris can speak Braille.
Once a cobra bit Chuck Norris' leg. After five days of excruciating pain, the cobra died.
When the Boogeyman goes to sleep every night, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris.
The dark is afraid of Chuck Norris.
Chuck Norris makes onions cry.
When Chuck Norris enters a room, he doesn't turn the lights on, he turns the dark off.
When Chuck Norris does a pushup, he's pushing the Earth down.
Chuck Norris is the reason why Waldo is hiding.
Superman owns a pair of Chuck Norris undies.
Before he forgot a gift for Chuck Norris, Santa Claus was real.
Culture experts say this kind of meme qualifies as an archetype, a person who represents a pure or exaggerated version of a representative character. Norris is the archetypal tough guy. Walz is the archetypal dad. Vance is…well, Walz called him weird and we’ll leave it at that. (In case you missed my earlier post about the magic of weird, you’re in for a treat.)
And yet there hasn’t yet been a good name for this archetyping figure of thought. Well, fellow soulbenders, it’s up to us to fill the gap. I propose give it an eponym, The Norris: the “Kind of person” figure.
An eponym (Greek for “upon a name”) is a word coined from a person’s name. Some examples:
Boycott, named after a greedy nineteenth-century land agent in Ireland to whose tenants refused to sell their goods.
Diesel, from the German inventor Rudolph Diesel.
Derby, from the 12th Earl of Derby, Edward Smith-Stanley, the father of modern horse racing.
Guppy, from British naturalist Robert John Lechmere Guppy, who in 1866 discovered the fish in Trinidad.
Shrapnel, from Henry Shrapnel, who invented an exploding shell in 1784, an especially deadly weapon that clearly would make war obsolete and bring about world peace.
Actually, any eponym under the glare of Chuck Norris would lose its capitalization. So let’s spell it “norris” and make it a verb.
Tim Walz and his dad vibe have been thoroughly norrissed.
She norrissed Taylor Swift as the kind of person who would look at you and see a song lyric.
Jay Heinrichs is the kind of guy who doom scrolls the news and immediately looks up the etymology of “doom scrolling.”
