Congressman's Tweet leads to comic gold mine for startup

Watch what you Tweet. That may be the painful lesson for Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra who found himself at the center of a Twitter maelstrom after he posted a short message on the social networking site comparing the recent Twitter use in Iran to a Republican power struggle with Democrats last year.

Thousands of Tweets ensued, most calling out Hoekstra's insensitive remarks by sarcastically offering other odd comparisons. Talking  Points Memo jumped into the fray with a story headlined "Twitter Users Heckle Hoekstra En Masse" where some of the absurd comparisons were highlighted.

As the action was unfolding yesterday, Ben Huh and the rest of the I Can Has Cheezburger crew came up with an idea: Why not create a new Web site to aggregate all of the Hoekstra mockery?

Within an hour, "Pete Hoekstra is a Meme" was born on Wordpress to aggregate Tweets and highlight captioned photos in the style of Fail Blog and I Can Has Cheezburger. There one can read posts such as: "Stuck inside working from home today. Now I know how Anne Frank felt."

Huh -- whose network of comedy Web sites attract more than five million page views a day -- is watching everything unfold in utter amazement.

In less than 30 hours, Pete Hoekstra is a Meme has attracted more than 60,000 page views and continues to grow as people Re-Tweet the site. Huh's not sure where the topic will go, but that's not so important right now.

"It is a hell of a lot of fun," said Huh, adding that they started it as a "whim."

The idea behind the Hoekstra site -- the fastest one ever built at the company -- is to "take a banal problem and compare it to a disaster or something critical," he said.

And he's hoping that they can create a way to turn Hoekstra's name into something associated with that concept.

"It would be neat for us to see it as the nomenclature of the Internet," said Huh.

Huh said that's similar to Dan Savage's campaign against former U.S. Senator Rick Santorum. Thanks in part to the efforts of The Stranger's fearless columnist, this site now appears at the top of search results when you search for Santorum's name on Google.

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