Ralph Douthat

About

Ralph Douthat is a novelty Twitter account that satirizes various commentaries of American political journalists and pundits, particularly conservative blogger and New York Times op-ed columnist Ross Douthat, by pairing their quotes with GIFs of Ralph Wiggum and other characters from The Simpsons. The GIFs are taken from the Simpsons screencap site Frinkiac.^[1]

Origin

On May 13th, 2016, @Ralph Douthat was started by Twitter user @alienjello^[2] with a tweet juxtaposing a New York Times editorial by Ross Douthat headline from January 7th, 2016, that reads "How Donald Trump Loses" with a picture of The Simpsons character Ralph Wiggum standing in front of his class with tape over his eyes followed by a second New York Times headline Below from May 3rd, 2016, that reads "The Defeat of True Conservatism" with a picture of Ralph rolling on the ground sick after ingesting too many purple berries. The tweet, pictured below, has 154 retweets and 380 likes as of July 19th, 2016.^[3]

Spread

On May 27th, 2016, The Daily Dot^[4] published a piece that reveled in the account's roasting of Ross Douthat, calling the originator a "Twitter Hero." In two months, Ralph Douthat has accrued over 2800 Twitter followers.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References