President Biden sent out a bafflingly stupid tweet that shows he (or perhaps his social media team) has no idea what the word “perspective” means.
“POV: You believe healthcare should be a right, not a privilege, in America,” Biden tweeted alongside a photo of himself and Vice President Kamala Harris.
POV: You believe that health care in America should be a right, not a privilege. pic.twitter.com/kHfxWTnsOE
— President Biden (@POTUS) March 27, 2024
The proper use of POV is obvious. If you write a caption that expresses your girlfriend’s POV, you won’t be able to see yourself in the photo unless you look in the mirror. Life is not a third-person video game.
Now, clearly Biden and Harris are trying to tell the president’s supporters that they believe health care is a right. But if you wanted to convey that, you should have written something like, “POV: You are about to meet a president and his vice president who believe that health care should be a right.”
As written, the use of the term “POV” suggests that the photos of the president and vice president are viewed by someone who believes health care is a right. That makes no sense at all. A lot of people see Biden and Harris in their day, and I think many of them have very different positions on health care.
Are the president and vice president implying that everyone who believes in free health care spends every waking moment staring at images of Biden and Harris? Because if that’s the case, that’s terrifying.
Look, I want people to have health care. I’ve often bemoaned the fact that while other developed countries have been able to provide some level of universal health care, the United States has largely failed to do so (and don’t even get me started on the disaster wrought by Obamacare). .
But if the price of free health care is a dystopian loop where images of Biden and Harris are projected onto my retinas 24/7 like A Clockwork Orange, then I’m out. please. I’ll google homeopathy. (Related: What the hell happened to Joe Biden’s jaw in this video?)
All kidding aside, it’s not that hard to come up with clever social media captions that aren’t blatant misuses of popular phrases.
From the perspective of someone who believes in universal health care, a better photo of Bernie Sanders (who, unlike Biden, actually supports single-payer) seen from a distance in the crowd at a rally might be more appropriate. Or maybe a closet filled with nothing but bags of weed and Che Guevara shirts.
