Give ‘piece’ a chance: White House makes Twitter typo, sparks Obamacare photo meme

Eric Pfeiffer
·Reporter

President Obama is back on the offensive when it comes to promoting the Affordable Care Act. But White House aides may want to hit the spell-checker next time before they get carried away promoting the president’s message.

On Thursday, the White House tweeted a picture of Obama holding a sign with the Twitter hashtag “#GetCovered Because.” The message on the president’s sign read: “Nobody should go broke just because they get sick.”

The photo immediately launched a small social media tidal wave, with people creating their own “GetCovered” images.

But the White House may have unintentionally created one of the more humorous signs. Shortly after imploring the account’s four million-plus followers to get covered because “it’s the smart thing to do,” the White House posted another image:

Of course, that’s piece, as in a piece of cake. Not the kind of peace John Lennon urged people around the world to give a chance.

As far as typos go, it might not be quite as precious as this 2012 “pubic affairs” spelling mistake from the University of Texas, but you can’t get much more high-profile than the White House ― and its 4.4 million Twitter followers.

Naturally, the Internet was quick to pounce:

For the uninitiated the #GetCovered hashtag was a social media push launched by Obama and some of his biggest celebrity supporters back in September in the days leading up to the official launch of the Affordable Care Act.

So far, the hashtag has resulted in more than 2.8 billion impressions, according to Topsy. There’s no way of knowing for sure how many, if any, people have signed up for health care as a result of the push. But for supporters and opponents of the law alike, we do have tangible evidence that it’s resulted in at least one golden Internet meme.

@AsheSchow @michellemalkin #GetCovered Spelling is still hard pic.twitter.com/sE3mWp88kS

— NavyTim (@ChiefNavyTim) December 13, 2013

And of course, it was a prime opportunity to bring back up … the most analyzed seat switch in the history of the world: