Being new to Twitter, I recently decided to spend a few days following some of the right wing tweets, primarily those with the hash tags #gop and #tcot (top conservatives on twitter). As an unapologetic liberal, I thought it might be easier to stomach right wing commentary if it came in snippets of 140 characters or less.
After a week of following conservatives, conspiracy theorists and wingnuts on Twitter, I’ve gotten fed up (and a bit bored) at some of the more obvious bits of misinformation and venom I’ve encountered. So I decided to have a little fun with some of the repetitive and mindless posts to keep myself entertained:
RockwithBeck tweeted: “I remember, no too many years back, everyone said the Democratic Party was doomed. The GOP is getting stronger day by day.“* I changed it slightly to read: “I remember everyone said the Dem Party was doomed. Now they say the GOP is getting stronger day by day.” then re-tweeted. Made more sense to me.
Another bit of scaremongering had to do with an upcoming Islamic conference being held in Chicago. IndyEnigma tweeted: “WHAT IN THE HELL? Islamic Supremacist Group Holds First U.S. Conference“*.
I changed the published link in this tweet to one discussing Pat Buchanan’s ties to a white supremacist movement, then sent it back out. For this, IndyEnigma has now become a follower of Rev. Hugh’s. None of this would be possible were it not for inattention mixed with technology like tinyurl.com that shortens lengthy URLs (thereby masking their origins).
A week ago, there was a dust-up between Sen. Barbara Boxer and a witness from the National Black Chamber of Commerce, Harry Alford. For days after the confrontation, Alford (rightly or wrongly) became something of a right wing media cause célèbre, and the video of their exchange has been promoted repeatedly as “evidence” of Democratic racism.
To be perfectly clear, I have no problem with people taking offense with Boxer on this, but I do find it ironic that a) most of the highly indignant tweets on this story are being spread by – judging by the photos – caucasians and that b) these are the same people who are also attacking President Obama with such vitrol and racial animus. So I re-tweeted MarissaGordon‘s message “Don’t let Boxer slide on her racism! No American should be treated like this!“* and added this URL, in which the Southern Poverty Law Center discusses some of the uglier racial attacks against Obama.
To me, it seems that the right wing are scrutinizing every one of Obama’s comments, looking for a way to score political points. Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) recently said as much – that half of the criticism of the health care bill is politically motivated. I personally think the number seems a bit low.
Consider the President’s recent press conference, where he commented briefly on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates in Cambridge. Less than twenty-four hours later, right wing twits are shrieking indignantly, characterizing his mild comments as “anti-Police bigotry on the left”.
“Gates spewing racial hatred at a police officer got him arrested. Obama throwing the race card at it was despicable”* I have no doubt that if the ethnicities of the two groups were reversed, the wingnut reaction would be drastically different.
In defense of Twitter, political tweets can be an effective way of spreading stories or ideas via attached URLs. Tweets can also be, depending on the poster, mindlessly absurd and hopelessly uninformed. (Reminding me of the old saying about someone who knows just enough to make them dangerous).
For example, wingers are shocked, indignantly posting a waterfall of tweets about Obama saying that he wasn’t familiar with a passage in the House healthcare bill (still in committee). Twits hold this up as proof that the President is frighteningly out of touch or that the legislative process is spiraling out of control.
However, why should the President read every rough draft of the House’s thousand-page bill before it’s finalized? It is hardly a damning statement by Obama, an admission that he will never read it, or an acknowledgement that he plans to sign the health care bill into law without knowing what the substance of the it is – unless you’re a paranoid wingnut fearful of encroaching socialism.
One twit, who describes himself as a “Conservative. Capitalist. Always learning, thinking, innovating” was just today asserting that “it should be an eye-opener that China has a better handle on our economy and its well-being than our own president and congress”*. When I asked him to substantiate his tweet, he responded “Even the communists know we need capitalism” and that “even China understands what the ramifications of this socialist agenda will mean for America if it continues.”*
I tried repeatedly to get him to cite even one source that supported his assertions, but he wouldn’t engage on substance. His final tweet was “Unfortunately you don’t have the capacity to absorb and understand all that is happening. I hope you enjoy your “hope & change.”"*
The last refuge of this breed of conservative twit seems to be that their arguments are just sooo advanced that poor liberals simply don’t have the capacity to understand.
Fed a constant diet of right wing spin from FOX, talk radio and conservative websites with no balance or counterpoint, I can’t say I’m surprised. The mingling of spin and half-truths has made the American conservative movement proudly ignorant and intellectually lazy.
