As you know, I am a passionate Democrat, one who is fiercely opposed to the tide of right wing sewage that is threatening to inundate our unfortunate country. You also know that I have a fiery temper, one that flares up when I am confronted with lies, bigotry, and general right wing slander/idiocy. The other day the execrable Howard Kurtz was attacking the Democrats for going too far in their criticisms of Dear Leader’s vicious racism. He was doing so in typically dishonest Kurtzian fashion, a style which has endeared him to the vampires that run Fox “News”. (How do Shep Smith, Chris Wallace, and Judge Andrew Napolitano put up with that place?) Anyway, I told him that in regard to his criticisms that he could “blow them out [his] ass”, and I characterized him as a “groveling whore”. Harsh, admittedly, but fair, and painfully accurate, imho.
I almost immediately received a message from Twitter that I had violated their rules. Evidently, “blow it out your ass” must constitute a threat, and describing someone (even metaphorically) as a whore constitutes some form of attacking the sexual orientation or behavior of another person. Refusing to delete the offending Tweet, I was therefore put into Twitter time-out. I can’t tweet, I can’t like, I can’t retweet, and I can’t comment on anything. (I have five more days of standing in the corner thinking about what I did and vowing to be nice next time.) OK, whatever. Not the end of the world. I have a lot of other stuff to do, and Twitter isn’t my life.
But I HAVE noticed that Twitter has been catering for years to a very nasty character, one with whom you may be familiar. According to an archive of his remarks, which may be found here, and various other sources, this nasty individual has Tweeted the following:
--84 times he has implied that Barack Obama was not born in the United States.
--31 times he spread the lie that autism is spread by vaccines.
--On at least 10 occasions he defended the use of torture.
--Women who are critical of him are “ugly”, “crazy”, “dumb”, “neurotic”, “frumpy” or “insecure”.
--On at least 102 occasions he has spread lies and misinformation about global warming.
--At least 33 times he has called the news media the “enemy of the people” in a phrase startlingly like the one used by Joseph Stalin.
--35 times he used the term “caravan” to describe desperate refugees working their way toward the United States.
--71 times he either complained about immigrants or denounced U.S. authorities for being too lenient with them.
--Half a dozen times in the last year he has used the word “invasion” to describe immigrants from Mexico or Central America.
--This individual regularly spews out race hatred, including telling women of color born in the United States to “go back where they came from”
--Several dozen times he sent Tweets complimenting brutal North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un.
--This individual retweeted the GROTESQUE LIE that 81% of the killers of whites are black. (The true figure is less than 15%.)
But this is what really, really got to me. This Tweet was sent on 7 November 2012:
He [Obama] lost the popular vote by a lot and won the election. We should have a revolution in this country!
Also sent on 7 November 2012:
We can't let this happen. We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!
Excuse me, but these sound very much like incitements to violence, said in the plainest way possible.
And nothing happened.
Can you guess why? (Btw, the idiot who sent those last two Tweets was wrong. Obama won the popular vote in 2012 by about 5,000,000. But it OUTRAGED this individual to think that in America one can lose the popular vote and win the Electoral College.)
So I am in time-out for calling Howard Kurtz a whore. (I apologize to whores everywhere for having done so, btw.)
But evidently you can call for revolution and an (armed?) march on Washington and continue to be the darling of Twitter.
Interesting, isn’t it?
P.S. I was banned from this person’s Twitter feed because of my response to the Tweet calling for revolution. My response began, “Fuck you, Trump.” I don’t think it was well-received.