Bruce Benidt
Jon Austin
tcarideo
Ellen Mrja
Mike Keliher
Joe LovelandU.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra probably wishes he hadn’t said this:
Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House.
I mean, I kinda see what he’s getting at, but — damn. I don’t want to suggest he was under the influence because he probably wasn’t, but let’s just hope this was the result of the text-messaging variety of drunk dialing.
I don’t want to discourage Rep. Hoekstra — or anyone in a similar position — from being as open an honest and in-touch as tools like Twitter allow him to be, but I do hope people in his position recognize the power that’s at their fingertips. This isn’t a Twitter mishap. This is a logic mishap, made public via Twitter. Could have just as easily been a TV camera or a sneaky HuffPo blogger with a tape recorder.
While we’re on the subject, Joe and Jane Twitter came up with some pretty stellar responses to Rep. Hoekstra’s comment.
Iran photo courtesy of dwh90723 on Flickr. Photo illustration (awesome not-equal sign, huh?) by me.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Iran, Pete Hoekstra, Twitter
Oh this Hoekstra is a piece of work. Get off the cross, Pete; someone else needs the wood.
Please read the Twitter responses Mike linked to above. They are priceless.
P.S. Drunk dialing was more fun before caller ID had been invented.
Twit indeed.
Here’s an honest question: Is it really Twitter that has been so important in Iran?
If the election uproar had happened a year or so ago before Twitter was widespread, would a similar dynamic have played out via emails and email forwarding with youtube links, blogs, and other older school online media?
Maybe I’m missing something, but it doesn’t seem like Twitter itself was necessary for the Iran dynamic to play out as it did. Twitter was helpful, but not necessary. On the other hand, Youtube, widespread phone-based communications capability, and phone-based cameras and videocams, those things seemed much more necessary than Twitter. I’m not denying that Twitter was useful and heavily used, I’m just wondering aloud whether other media could have and would have served the same function a year ago.
Joe, you’re spot on. Twitter is the tool. Before, it would have been fax machines and emails.
I’m working on a big thought-piece about the network effects involved.
And it seems as it is not even “the tool,” but rather “a tool” in a large box of tools that address the same need.
The role of Twitter in this whole Iran story has, I think, been a bit overblown. Still, the videos on YouTube and the photos on Flickr were certainly helped along by the likes of Twitter.
But at best, Twitter and the like enhance — not make — the revolution.
As you’ve point out before Mike, the mainstream media is desperate to show that they aren’t obsolete, and therefore are hip to The Twitter thingy on the kids’ Interwebs. That dynamic does seem to lead to mainstream media hyperbole on anything Twitter-related.
Okay… just as a for-instance.
What if he followed it up with a comment about “Thank God we’re in the free world, where dissent is tolerated.”?
I can totally understand how crass the comment seems in one light, but cut the man some slack.
IN NO WAY was Hoekstra attempting to elevate House Republicans to the same level of moral authority as the Iranian youth.
IN NO WAY was he equating the importance of the energy debate amendment minutiae with the events in Iran.
IN NO WAY was he trying to steal the glory or the credit for the idea of using Twitter in that manner.
He was pointing out parallels involving a communications channel:
- Someone in authority acts in a manner to shut down discussion.
- Others in protest use technology to perform an end-around and get their message out.
- The use of that technology becomes a sidebar story in and of itself.
Let me use a neutral example.
Keliher and I are watching the Packers beat the living snot out of the Vikings. In a craven attempt to keep your new boy Favre from getting sacked again, the left guard performs a leg-whip on KGB, sending him sprawling in pain.
As we look at the replay, I turn to Keliher and say “Hey, I had a guy block me like that in 6th grade peewee ball.”
To which Keliher turns on me and says “How DARE you! How DARE you equate that puny shot you suffered with the crushing blow and awesome might that Steve Hutchinson would most certainly rain down upon your unworthy buttocks! We’re talking about the Minne-freakin-sota Vikings, not some Bush-league pee-wee crap!”
One can note parallels, even when there are orders of magnitude of difference along certain metrics.
But of course, this is now going to be the thing that Hoekstra is known for among the Twitter-verse, and anything he does or says is going to be accompanied by a disclaimer that he obviously thinks SO much of himself, anything he has to say must be suspect.
(I’d cross-post this over at Better Discourse, but Mike might delete it on the grounds that insulting the Vikings is not gentlemanly.)
You’re permitted to insult the Vikings as you see fit. (In fact, I challenge you to make a comment related to the Vikings that’s not insulting. Probably difficult.) If you say a peep about my Twins, though, I swear to [diety], you’ll wish you hadn’t.
You make a good point about it being fair to point out reasonable correllations. And I don’t actually think Hoekstra thinks his struggles were actually on the same level as Iranians’ current struggles. But my gut tells me this falls on the wrong side of the Reasonableness line. Maybe I’m off base, but that’s what retractions are for, right, Hoekstra?
Ike: Your attempt to “cut the man some slack” strikes me as odd. The public statement made by Hoekstra most certainly was a direct attempt to elevate the Republican “struggles” with censorship to the same level as that being experienced by the Iranian people. The Iranians are fighting true government suppression, violence and murder. Hoekstra was whining.
By his ill-advised comment, Hoekstra shows himself to be self-centered and self-directed. And, of course, he demonstrates the same old conservative sense of America being related somehow to all foreign policy disputes. That’s why McCain and Lindsay Graham are now urging Obama to get tougher in Iran.
The Twins? Okay, now you’re talking my language. Try Humber, Mulvey, Guerra (the next Doc Gooden, ERA about 5.5 at Fort Myers) and Gomez, .219 with OBP under .300–for Santana. Did we really need Lester and Ellsbury? Delmon? Already universally pillaried but impossible–what, five extra-base hits all season! No one could be this pathetic. Pitchers outslug him. What was anyone thinking? Ayala–belongs not in Rochester. I’d say Beloit. Not a single reliable acquisition. Not a single high draft choice ready to play. You’re suggesting Tolbert is a major league player?! Fans getting shafted by mis-management. Well, you brought it up–something about “reasonable correlations.”
We need middle relievers like the GM needs sales.
Very true. Absence of reliable middle-relief and set-up arms emerging as central “health” issue in the game, approaching almost endemic magnitude. Have you checked out the Indians lately? Those fans are best served by turning off the set before the seventh inning starts. Too agonizing to watch. At least Twins loyalists no longer required to endure the infamous combo Henn/Ayala (soon to become Henn/Keppel)–not exactly Dizzy and Daffy of lore.