Well, The Shrub through there were no dinosaurs, so it stands to reason that President Jesus would try to deny the existence of shrubbery by sending all of The Shrub’s White House tweets down the memory hole. (Aside: thank you, George Orwell, for providing us with the term Memory Hole. I’m sure it will come in handy in the next three and a half years, at least!)
From ValleyWag:
Barack Obama’s Webheads are getting ready to launch a new Twitter feed for President Change. But the White House already had a Twitter account. It has disappeared down the memory hole.
Given the widespread belief that Obama invented the Internet, many will scoff at the idea that the Bush White House had a Twitter account. But it did — and the administration handed over twitter.com/thewhitehouse at noon on Inauguration Day, just like it did with the whitehouse.gov website. Google still has the old account, with Obama’s tweets, in its cache.
Valleywag alum Paul Boutin suggests on Gadgetwise that this is a simple rationalization of accounts, matching the definite-article-free “whitehouse” username the Obama team uses on Flickr and YouTube. But Obama’s Twitterers didn’t just change the username on the account; they started fresh, wiping out all of the White House’s existing Twitter followers, and the entire archive of messages.
Perhaps it’s safe to assume that the dwindling fans of the Bush White House wouldn’t want to transfer their allegiances. And many of the Bush tweets were just broken pointers to pages on 43’s now-archived website. But there ought to be something about the White House that transcends its occupant. A new president doesn’t move his residence from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There’s something about this move that smacks of change for change’s sake.
You know, I never disliked Barack Obama. Really. Even as a libertarian, even though I basically feel that he’s a socialist in progressive clothing, I never had a negative word about him as a person. Hell, I was crossing my fingers for the man to win against Hillary Clinton, after Mike Gravel dropped out of course, because he seems like more of a uniter, where as Ms. Clinton seems much more divisive, even among her party members, let alone among others. Mr. Obama never gave me hope — the soon-to-be President, in fact, has always made me uneasy with the easy in which he can ensnare a crowd with a turn of phrase. People have used the term “drunk from the Obama Kool Ade” to describe some of his strongest advocates, and you know, I can see those similarities, I can even find both humor and discomfort in them, but I still liked him as a person. He seemed like a nice guy, a good human being, someone who wasn’t going to be a dick. Sure, nice guys who are just doing what they think is right will cause unjust wars and some of the worst fiscal damage to a nation in a century, but this nice guy also seemed to be intelligent, and nice and intelligent were a consolation for me, after the last eight years.
But these stunts — these constant reminders that he is from Illinois and is progressive and, for lack of a better word, Lincolnish — are really driving me toward disdain for our now and future President.
On the eve of his inauguration, he hosts a party at the Lincoln memorial. Before that, he took a short train ride to Washington, traveling the paty that Lincoln did. He’s a young senator from Illinois, like Lincoln. He is intelligent, as I’ve already mentioned, and rose from humble beginnings, like Lincoln.
And you know, I’m sick of the way he’s pointing to these similarities, as though he does not feel he is a strong enough personality to carve his own path through history, so he must ride the coat tails and follow the well-marked journey of one who’s successfully come before.
Well, not the exact same path, hopefully.
But, while this can be interpreted as an awkward, wavering faith in his own ability to lead, I see this as potentially something much more serious: hubris. Bravado. Showboating. It’s the kind of boastful displays that are called “excessive celebration” in football. Dallas Cowboys wide receiver T.O. is often penalized for bragging about his touchdowns in the endzone — this year, after a particularly spectacular touchdown, my favorite player in the league crouched down in a runner’s stance before taking off, ostensibly in honor of the Olympic victory of Usain Bolt. “Look at me, I’m as fast as the fastest man on earth,” he seemed to say. “Unsportsmanlike,” the refs called it and penalized the Cowboys by 15 yards.
Same situation applies.
You cannot compare yourself to someone of such stature yourself — to draw such comparisons on your own makes you look like a braggart. Let others do so — and many have called the comparison between the two junior senators from Illinois — and your detractors may come around to see the similarities and transpose one’s success to the other. Do it yourself, and it is excessive celebration, it is bragging, it is a disgusting display and makes me wonder exactly how badly I’ve misjudged this “nice” guy who seemed relatively harmless until his socialist-leaning liberal friends became a major power in congress and until he let his ego show.
Which, I add without hesitation, is something very un-Lincolnish indeed.
