Whitmer Doritos “Communion” shows the danger of being too online

When I saw a viral video of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer placing a Dorito on the tongue of a woman I couldn’t identify (who turned out to be social media influencer Liz Plank), I was kind of shocked . To many it appeared to be a parody or at least an appropriation of the traditional Roman Catholic form of the host. The fact that there was a passing text about the US Chips Act did not alleviate the strangeness of the image. Why would an incredibly smart politician like Whitmer do something like that?

When this video came up in a discussion with my work colleagues, I was informed that it was a meme, as if that fully explained everything. When there was an explosion of protests by Michigan Catholics (some of them, of course, fueled by MAGA people and democracy-hating traditionalist Catholic groups), Plank testily told the “crazies” that this was all a tried-and-tested joke:

I don’t know about you, but when I see Jeremy Allen White giving Stephen Colbert (who, by the way, is a devout Catholic) a slice of pizza, I don’t think so community, I find Colbert is fed pizza by someone off camera. In the Whitmer Plank video, the size of the chip, the admiring upward glance of the Dorito recipient, and the positioning of the two women make the difference clear.

But in any case, this video was distributed to untold millions of people who had never seen the Colbert White video and probably couldn’t tell a meme from a matzoh ball. The fact that Whitmer is wearing a Harris Walz hat during this strange pantomime and that Plank is the founder of the group Hotties for Harris is an incredible gift to the reactionaries who claim the Democrats are a bunch of Satan-aligned baby-killers Libertines smartasses who would close churches if they had the chance. By the way, it’s not just Catholics who are a little sensitive to the Eucharist. My own liberal denomination of Disciples of Christ views communion as an indispensable symbol of human equality.

To her credit, Whitmer immediately apologized for taking offense, and thankfully she didn’t just say, “It’s a meme, stupid boomers!” according to Washington post:

“In my 25 years of public service, I would never do anything that denigrates the beliefs of others,” the statement said. “I have used my platform to advocate for people’s right to hold and practice their personal religious beliefs. My team spoke with the Michigan Catholic Conference. What was supposed to be a video about what the CHIPS law means to Michigan jobs was interpreted as something it was never intended to be, and for that I apologize.”

But Whitmer’s staff couldn’t let it go, insisting that the people who complained simply didn’t understand it, according to the Detroit News:

“The governor’s social media is known for infusing her communications with pop culture,” Helen Hare, a spokeswoman for Whitmer, said in a statement. “This popular trend has been used by countless people, including Billie Eilish, Kylie Jenner and Stephen Colbert, and the fact that people are paying attention to a video promoting President Biden’s CHIPS Act proves it’s working.”

Here’s the thing: unhip people get the same voice as hip people, and you can’t really expect them to understand the process by which a moment on social media becomes an all-purpose explanation for what you want to do.

Believe me, I understand that Donald Trump and his conservative Christian supporters are committing more sacrileges every minute than anything secular liberals have done on social media, starting with the idea that the 45th President is God-ordained to America to his endless demonstrations of religious illiteracy and finally MAGA’s fundamentally anti-Christian attitude towards immigrants, people of color and the poor. But this little furor over Whitmer is a good reminder that in politics you can really get “too online” and forget that large swaths of the electorate can look at a picture and not get the joke.