Barack Obama – Susan X Jane

When Not To Tweet

Social media–we love it, we live on it, we can’t do without it. With tweets clocking in under 140 characters, Twitter is the quickest high out there, with regular users sending dozens of tweets daily. But like all fun things, you really have to have some limits. Too much ice cream? Diarrhea. Too much tweeting? Same result. So even the most “expert” tweeter in chief should remember when not to tweet. Here are four tips for anybody, really, but especially anybody ruining this country with his tweets:

In the Midst of Tragedy

When crisis strikes in our too fragile world, Twitter can be an important tool to get out information quickly, check in to find people in harm’s way and to offer prayer and solidarity to bolster hearts and minds in the moments after a catastrophe. Tweeting in these times requires all the gravitas and sensitivity you can muster–to tweet otherwise can be disastrous for careers and reputations (of nations, even). This is not the moment to drop a flaming tweet to stir people up. That is irresponsible and uncaring, showing your weakness as a leader.

Protip: be like Obama–he knew how to send a tweet that calmed and uplifted in dark times. Bonus protip: that’s what leaders are supposed to do.

Late at night

Bae acting up and you can’t sleep, all in your feelings? Do not tweet about them. You are vulnerable. It’s dark out. Maybe you’re listening to Lil Uzi Vert walking around the White House in your bathrobe alone with only your wounds and some ice cream. Do not pour out your pain on Twitter. Some pain is supposed to be private, some anger is not righteous and only reveals the small minded self-pity that humans tend to in these late nights weeping sessions.

Protip: Put the phone–and the ice cream–away and go the fuck to bed. Better yet, leave your phone at the office and switch up your playlist until you can be trusted after hours.

When you don’t know what you’re talking about

Look, if you tweet some ignorant shit, you most definitely will be in good company–a solid portion of tweets are ignorant, tweeted by people who are beyond ignorant. Some make a living at it. There are even robotweeters programmed to tweet out ignorant shit all day long. But, as your mom used to always say, just because all your friends are destroying the internet with a bunch of fuckery and false facts that doesn’t mean you have to, too. In fact, if you are a professional of any kind—any kind, Don–you recognize your Twitter feed as an extension of your professional reputation. Tweet stupid, look stupid.

Protip: If you’re about to tweet, run a quick fact check, just a little google action. Level up–Breitbart, Info Wars and Fox Commentary are not independent fact checkers. Please do better.

When your friends and family (and country) are concerned

We have friends and family so someone will tell us the truth when we get out of line. Unlike vodka bottles under the couch or pill bottles hidden in a purse, your Twitter habit is out there for all to see. I mean everyone can see you up saying crazy talk late at night (and can totally picture aforementioned bathrobe and ice cream). We noticed that you have to tweet foolishness just to get out of bed in the morning. Even when you’re away on a great trip you can’t help tweeting bullshit. Everyone knows your tweeting is out of control. You doubling down and saying tweeting is cool because all your friends like it when you tweet just sounds like the last defense before they load you onto a plane for rehab. When Kellyanne Conway, whose tie to reality is tenuous at best, tells you to chill, chill. But when her husband has to get in on it along with all your advisors and a few friends? Time to put the phone down. Don’t listen to Don Jr. He’s enabling.

Protip: Listen to the people that care about. The love you like crazy and they feel like they’re losing you. The rest of us hear your cry for help and a good 65% percent support you packing up today and going away till you–and this country–recover.

There you have it: four good times not to tweet, whether you’re a Twitter newbie, or whether you are the ~~leader of the free world~~ President of the United States and should be running the country and fighting your impending impeachment instead of tweeting like a petulant teenager. Now go tweet responsibly, or, maybe, 45, not at all!

That’s Your Boy?

We pose this question to Texas gubernatorial candidate Greg Allen who invited his pal Ted Nugent on stage this week at a campaign rally. After appearing with Allen twice on Tuesday, a snowball of criticism followed Nugent all week, calling him out for his most recent round of outrageous remarks about the president.

Nugent is no stranger to pissing people off. He has been an outspoken spokesperson for gun rights as a board member for the NRA, a drum banger for the Grand Ole Party, and a staunch critic of Obama. His incendiary comments have offended women, minorities, gun reform advocates, democrats, and animal lovers.

In fact, Nugent has been blowing up the airwaves since the 1980’s, appearing on talk shows, at rallies, and as a favorite guest on conservative radio. His most recent comments, calling Obama a “subhuman mongrel” among other things in an interview with guns.com, were on the air for a full month before his appearance this week with Abbott, but when criticism required some response from Abbott, his aids countered that they were unaware of comments. They added the fact that Nuget drew a crowd–in one instance tripling turn out when it was announced that Nugent would be appearing with Abbott–so perhaps adding Nugent to the rallies was just as calculated a move as it seems to be.

Nor is Abbott the first politician that Nugent has rolled out the rock and roll rant for. In fact, there is a list of conservative politicians from Rick Perry to Tom Tancredo who have used Nugent to drum up support. Even as popular-potential-2016-front-runners Ted Cruz and Rand Paul condemned Nugent’s comments this week, you don’t have to look too far back to find them sharing airwaves–and opinions–with Nugent.

The week ended with a predictable round of tepid apologies from both Nugent and Abbott. Let’s be clear: calling Obama a subhuman mongrel is racist. Nugent has been making these comments for long enough that his apology is meaningless. It’s time for his political pals to think long and hard about standing next to Nugent and others who feel free to flaunt their racism on TV and radio.

The GOP has enough work to do engaging women and people of color. Alienating those voters by locking arms with Nugent is an easy mistake to avoid.

We Ain’t What We Ought to Be

Today is the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. The 50 years since that famous speech stand today as a measuring stick to place blackness in America against. To paraphrase MLK himself, it’s 50 years later and the negro is still not free. Now I can hear you shouting “Black President !” from here, and I’ve seen Obama hanging around, so I know lots has changed. Even with all the change, the needle for black people–and poor people– that the civil rights activists fought so hard to move seems to point to the same old numbers.

By every metric of social well being , blacks lag behind their white counterparts. While civil rights gave legal rights to blacks that were long overdue, the last 50 years has witnessed the slow erosion of these gains. Stop and Frisk, Stand Your Ground, and the Supreme Court’s decision on the Voting Rights act all remind us that racism lives on in the heart of the American justice system, while discriminatory financial and educational policies bring the fight to our homes and schools.

What about in the fantastical world of mainstream media? Surely the media does a much better job of representation now, right? Well……

In 1963 there was not one network show–and there were only major networks and no cable, young ones– that starred or featured a character of color. Films, much the same. This is not to say that people of color were excluded from media. Of course westerns like Bonanza and Gunsmoke filled screens with feathered savages, and there were more than a couple of black entertainers popular that year. The racist show Amos and Andy, cancelled years earlier still ran in syndication in over 50 markets. Whatever popular representations of race there were by and large were would not be acceptable by today’s standards….right?

Fast

forward 50 years. We have handfuls of big blacks filling up our screens, and incidentally draining our pockets. Beyonce and Jay Z are the reigning king and queen of a kingdom full of rappers, runners and ratchet weave wearers. We even have some young white ladies who I refuse to name here doing their best to play out their own tilted image of what it is to be black.

There’s no doubt that there are hundreds more black characters in media today, but just as in 1963, media representations show blacks as lazy and crazy, violent and vixenish. When we fight mainstream media for representation, we can’t stop with appropriate quantity. Quality matters. High visibility celebs who push a self-centered materialistic life, and images that reinforce the worst of classic stereotypes aren’t progress.

MLK’s I have a dream speech resonates so strongly all these years later because still we strive to be a better more perfect union. Until the words that echo off the water of the mall are the same that make up the stories on our screens, we still have the fight in front of us. As the old saying goes, we ain’t what we used to be, but we ain’t what we ought to be. Lets not take another 50 years to get there.