For some reason, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke just can’t stop leaping onto counters and tables in restaurants and coffee houses to deliver speeches as he tours the country on his 2020 presidential campaign.
The 46-year-old Texas Democrat does it so often, it’s become a thing, as in a memey thing on the interwebs.
Note that in the first montage of pictures, Beto is atop a counter — then squatting down to speak to someone at ground level.
The upstart candidate — who the mainstream media is gushingly comparing to John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama — has a thing for jumping up on lofty perches when he’s on the campaign trail.
“When Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke arrived for a campaign stop at Beancounter Coffeehouse in Burlington, Iowa, he hopped right up on the shop’s counter and addressed the masses below. During a visit to Narrow Way Cafe in Detroit, Michigan, O’Rourke grabbed a microphone and scrambled up onto the counter. At Sing-A-Long Bar and Grill in Mount Vernon, Iowa? You bet he got up on that counter,” the Daily Beast reported.
But in this day and age, everything a candidate does gets critiqued. Josh Wilson, who owns Cohesive Coffee in Greenville, SC, told the Beast that he didn’t get the whole standing-on-the-counter thing.
“As a cafe owner, the way the picture shows doesn’t make sense,” Wilson said of the squatting picture. “I would understand standing on the counter because the crowd was so big, although organizing it would be better. But he’s kneeled down. It seems like a photo opp that wasn’t necessary. His feet are right by the cups.”
Gross, others say. “Politicos and verified Twitter users have opined on the cleanliness — or lack thereof — of O’Rourke’s dirty shoes trampling the same surface used to serve customers,” the Daily Caller wrote.
“People from cultures where shoes are considered very dirty and not worthy of being in the house get grossed out when politicians walk all over counters,” journalist Yashar Ali tweeted.
And “Louie” is right: Beto stands 6′ 4″, putting him head and shoulders above most who might pack into a coffee house to hear him speak.
Of course, all the requisite jokes have followed, including this obvious one: Beto’s main platform is a countertop.
Then there are the memes.
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Oh it is, “Patrick_of_Bama,” it is.