In The Blogs

We Are All 17 Year Olds Now

| Mon Jun. 8, 2009 7:19 AM PDT

This was all over the tubes yesterday, but it's so entertainingly crazy that I feel like I have to pass it along. It's Sen. Chuck Grassley's Twitter feed, and Grassley really seems to have fully channeled the junior high school spirit of the whole thing. First he's annoyed at an anodyne Obama call to "deliver" on healthcare because Obama is, like, obviously a slacker since he took some of the weekend off for sightseeing. Then, a few minutes later, he's annoyed all over again. Finally, this morning he feels compelled to toss a random barb at Al Gore.

Very strange. Is Grassley off his meds or something? Or did someone hijack his Twitter account? That was actually my first thought, but his office hasn't denied the tweets so I guess they're really his. Thus does Twitter make fools of us all. Enjoy.

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Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here.

Comments

If you are going to twitter

Submitted by B on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 7:37 AM PDT.

If you are going to twitter at 4AM after a long Saturday night of . . . (god knows what Republican senators are into these days) it's best to use the anonymous account.

Also: Grassley has calculated his carbon footprint? WTF?

Sure, he calculated his

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 10:55 AM PDT.

Sure, he calculated his footplrint. Thankfully it's only 25 percent of Al Gore. So, Al Gore takes up, what, about 18 square feet? Wow. So Grassley's footprint is about 4 and a half square feet, eh? Admirable. Guess grammar and usage aren't on the list of required skills...

Al Gore

Submitted by phleabo (not verified) on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 7:32 AM PDT.

You know, I know he buys carbon offsets, etc. but couldn't the single highest profile spokesman for getting something done about global warming think about how his mansion looks to other people?

Either spend the money to green that sucker out, or sell it. If you're serious about global warming, you also need to appear to be serious about it, prima face.

I also agree it's painful

Submitted by Travis--dammit, who registered my name (not verified) on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 8:29 AM PDT.

I also agree it's painful that he has that big-ass house, but ultimately, this is the right way to play the game in the long-run. Environmentalism has been used as a cudgel by the right wing to mean a forced diet of things that no one wants, restrictions and limitations imposed externally by an oblivious government. Gore is explicitly showing that there are alternatives to immediately tearing down your house and living in a strawbuilt.

That's my guess, at least.

Bumper Stickers

Submitted by Brian O on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 7:40 AM PDT.

The popularity of Twitter is giving me new hope in my idea to produce double-wide bumper stickers. I could sell them to the same simple people by explaining they give twice the amount of room for their complex ideas.

Chuck ain't manage this level of being hipp

Submitted by SRW1 (not verified) on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 7:53 AM PDT.

Color me sceptical. In my book good old Chuck is too much of a geezer and to get to this level of (perceived) hippness, he probably has outsourced the composition of his twitter messages to a young staffer (or maybe one of his grandchildren).

Get used to it.

Submitted by Trippp on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 8:09 AM PDT.

Sigh. I am afraid that once we transition from our unsustainable constant growth world economy, which has for the time being allowed us to paper over all these supposedly petty concerns about who has what and whether he/she deserves it, we will be smack dab back into the beginning of middle school with only a slightly larger vocabulary and a much larger audience for our gripes, complaints, and barbs.

And yeah, I know, run on sentence and 'he/she' but dammit I ain't giving in to twitter and 'progress' just yet.

Tripp

My first impression

Submitted by mctee on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 8:10 AM PDT.

He sounded like an offended and self-pitying drunk man. Especially going from the "even workin WKEND" to that "u think everything is NAIL I'm no NAIL" line.

It reminded me of Dan Aykroyd as a drunk Louis Winthorpe III in "Trading Places".

Yeah, "trading Places!"

Submitted by Trippp on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 8:31 AM PDT.

By golly that was a great movie! I don't care if it had nearly every stereotype in the book, complete with crusty old heartless prejudiced rich white dudes, an apparently uptight taciturn butler who helps the underdog, a hooker with a heart of gold and a superb financial plan, a wimpy lapdog of a young white man, slacker leaching low-life friends, and a hip, fast talking black dude who is smarter than everyone.

I'm not even being sarcastic, because it also had gorilla anal rape of a stupid white bad-guy who will soon be senator of my great state of MN, and face it, you ain't gonna see that many places at the cinema. We need more cliche movies about class warfare so we can laugh on the way down.

Tripp

Wrong actor

Submitted by gslusher on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 11:17 AM PDT.

In "Trading Places," Al Franken played one of the baggage handlers, NOT the private detective, Clarence Beeks (played by Paul Gleason), who was put into the gorilla suit and had that "close encounter of the fourth kind" with the gorilla (played by Don McCLeod, who seems to have played several gorillas--check IMDB.com).

Trading Places

Submitted by mctee on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 11:42 AM PDT.

Not only does the movie spoof class warfare, but it also throws in the race card. Eddie Murphy's character of Billy Ray Valentine comes out of nowhere, not unlike Barack Obama. Barack is the one everyone listens to and likes now. Any Republican Senator out of power could be "Louie". However, you still have the Banksters, Mortimer and Randolph Duke, running the show...just like our "too big to fail" finance industry.

Grassley needs to learn abbreviations if he wants to twitter

Submitted by Godless Heathen on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 1:28 PM PDT.

I mean, it drives me totally crazy, but I kind of understand something like enuf instead of enough if you were in a situation where you needed two more characters to finish your thought. How the hell are you going to type "per cent" instead of "%"?

You think Grassley doesn't know what the shift key does?

Also, maybe 4am is really 7am DC and 4am LA? If not, Grassley likely just learned about the internet's version of a drunk dial.

I was going to defend his

Submitted by Royko on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 1:33 PM PDT.

I was going to defend his teenage spelling on the grounds that he was running up against the 140 limit (the limit is annoying, although anyone with half a brain could condense his words in a better way than he did), but I checked, and that first tweet has quite a few characters left. I suppose he was using a mobile device and being lazy about it, hopefully?

agree with SRW

Submitted by flubber on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 3:34 PM PDT.

"good old Chuck is too much of a geezer and to get to this level of (perceived) hippness, he probably has outsourced the composition of his twitter messages"

Yeah, not real. Maybe a hijack, like Mr. Drum says.

gslusher and mctee, Yeah,

Submitted by Trippp on Mon Jun. 8, 2009 5:21 PM PDT.

gslusher and mctee,

Yeah, thanks! So McClead plays a lot gorillas, eh? As they say in Hollywood, if you've got a look, go with it.

One difference between true life and the Hollywood movies is the happy ending. The stereotypes and cliches may happen in real life, but those in power rarely get the comeupance they deserve.

Tripp