No Snaps For GOP: Comic Louis Virtel Demands Party Stop Using GIF

Musicians demanding that politicians stop using their songs is a time-honored tradition in American politics — but web-personalities demanding the same with respect to GIF-use is a new one.

Yesterday (January 12), comedian Louis Virtel noticed a GIF of himself from a 2015 appearance on Jeopardy! appear on the House Republicans' website. The animation features Virtel's flashy snap after correctly answering a Daily Double question, which made its way around the web soon after the episode aired.

Virtel appreciated the fun bit of attention that followed ("I felt like an ebullient, intense, trivia-obsessed gay guy. I would argue that I looked like one too," he wrote on an essay published to HitFix). That is, until the Republican party got its hands on the moment.

In the essay, Virtel proceeds to argue that the GOP's use of the GIF — used to promote a Snapchat analysis of the State of the Union — was implicitly contradictory, and ironically sampled a moment that celebrated a lot of what the party decries.

"Nothing about representing myself on Jeopardy! with excitement, self-possession, and pride has anything to do with the GOP’s ideals, and it is borderline traumatizing to see my image associated with their horrifying, regressive shambles of a party," he wrote. "...instead of 'dragging' the GOP for being a gross, harmful creepshow that continues to endanger the lives of LGBT Americans, I will solemnly say this: The fact that the GOP can’t detect gay pride in arguably the gayest Jeopardy! moment of all time is proof of their brutal ignorance...this is just another laughably moronic mistake to consider alongside their regressive legacy."

Point certainly made.

Watch the moment above.

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