When Strange Internet Memes Actually Do Some Good, Bernie Sanders Edition

When memes collide. The longboarding/juice/
Fleetwood Mac guy and Bernie. The Bernie
meme is raising LOTS of money for charity.

 Many of you are probably thoroughly sick of the now super famous Bernie Sanders mitten meme. That's the one based on the photograph of him sitting at the Joe Biden inauguration in those huge mittens. 

The sale of merchandise based on that meme has so far raised $1.8 million for charities here in Vermont. 

This is how quickly it went: The famous photo was taken on January 20.  According to the Associated Press, On the evening of January 21, the Sanders campaign put t-shirts, sweatshirts and stickers on its we site and they sold out within a half hour.

More merch went up over the following weekend, but was sold out by Monday morning. 

The money raised in the sales went to Meals on Wheels programs throughout Vermont, community action agencies such as food banks, senior citizens and medical services for the poor. 

Getty Images, which owns rights to the famous photo, said it will donate its proceeds as part of the licensing agreement to put on the merchandise to the Meals on Wheels of America.

Jen Ellis, an elementary school teacher from Essex Junction, Vermont, had given the mittens to Sanders a few years ago as a gift.  Ellis was out of the mitten making business by the time Sanders' photo went big. However, she just made three more pairs of mittens for fundraising to Passion 4 Paws Vermont and Outright Vermont, reports the AP. 

She's auctioning a third pair to help fund her daughter's college fund.  

Ellis looks like she'll come out on top with this too

She has partnered with Darn Tough Socks, a popular Vermont-based sock manufacturer has teamed up with Ellis to design and sell a line of socks with the now-famous Bernie mitten pattern.

Ellis is also teaming up with Vermont Teddy Bear to make mittens, or a bear Bernie - who knows? 

Funny thing is, all this business/capitalism is going on with Bernie Sanders, a person proud of his socialism.

To be fair to Bernie, though, he's a democratic socialist. He's actually OK with people making money hand over fist. Just as long as the money makers are fair to workers, and probably pay somewhat more in taxes so thatthe government covers more basic expenses for people.   And people are still free to choose who they want to run the country through voting.

To get political here, the charge by some Republicans that Bernie wants to turn us into another disastrous Venezuela is just not true. He really wants to turn us into a big version of Scandinavia. 

And I think Scandinavia, both politically and climatologically, is more suitable for Bernie mittens anyway.