2012 in memes

Here is the year 2012 in images, mostly of memes across advertising, politics, and social media.

2012 advertising memes

Sexy Jedi bubblebath

Meaningful anecdotes

Billy O’Brien, New Penn State Football Coach

The NCAA severely punished PSU for covering up a decade-long sex abuse scandal by its assistance coach Jerry Sandusky. They revoked all its football scholarships and eliminated barriers to existing players transferring to other top schools. They even allowed other schools to come in, evaluate, and recruit players.

Enter new, first time coach O’Brien, who was filling the shoes of 50 year legend Joe Paterno. And amid this cloud of scandal, he managed to keep the keep together. They actually had a winning season in 2012, but more importantly, he let the kids on the team know is was okay to win. They were not responsible for the scandal nor the cloud; all they could do was be a shining role model to others.

The coach said he gets his resilience from watching his 11 year old son, Jack, who is fighting Lissencephaly and faces 10 seizures a day.

O’Brien was named coach of the year, not for what the team did on the field, but for what he did to remind us what teams and sport and games are all about – building character, surmounting adversity.

Newtown, CT gun massacre. This update is from my friend Kevin about his daughter Zoe. It was the most moving thing I read from that tragedy.

In my view, we could ban guns and we could improve mental health care in America, and both would help. But neither would eliminate these types of events. The root cause is the absence of what I’ve come to call “Hearth Care.” That is caring for others as a community, and treating everyone as a brother who is someone’s son or daughter and not some stranger.

We need to end health care and replace it with health cures and hearth care. Mental Health cannot be cared for by a  ‘system’ but only by a community.

In January 2012 Heather and I announced that we’d split up. This note is how I introduced my explanation of the journey. It still applies today, and for the future.

Japan’s 2011 earthquake continues to attract attention through 2012. Above: Blog activity around my Japan earthquake posts. Below: The $8.9 million Japan Earthquake relief fund that continues to get donations every day, two years later. This did not happen for the Haiti earthquake nor any other natural disaster in the past decade.

Politics

John Stewart compares the GOP’s counter-proposal to going over the fiscal cliff to Stalin F&@king the bald eagle.

The end of the world

Seems to have been on peoples’ minds throughout the year.

Santa Claus

Meta

Or the zeitgeist.

MSNBC finally does something right, twice in one year!

Two famous rants sum up the 2012 political year.

Rachel Maddow: Election Night Summary: Republicans Got Shellacked!

Lawrence O’donnell reports on the very unsexy but very significant last minute work of Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell to keep the country running for another year, executed in the 11th hour, and IGNORED by the media.