Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Going Down


The 2009 Inaugural Address of @GeorgeWallace

If George Wallace were still around during the Twitter age, I think that he might give a speech something like this:
People of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, distinguished guests, Google Reader users:

Before I begin my talk with you, I want to ask you for a few minutes patience while I say something that is on my heart: I want to thank those intrepid folks on the internet who first gave an anxious country boy his opportunity to discuss the negroes he despised in a more public way. I shall always owe a lot to those who gave me that first opportunity to tweet.

I will never forget the warm support and close loyalty from my followers, 304 of whom made #PappysMoonshine a trending topic for a full 4 hours last Christmas and the 1 little old lady who accidentally wrote @PappysMoonshine, by mistake, because she doesn't understand Twitter. Bless her heart.

I hope you'll forgive me these few moments of remembering...but I wanted them...and you...to know, that I shall never forget.

And I wish I could shake hands and thank all of you in the Twitterverse who have tweeted @ me, and those of you who have not, for I know you tweeted your honest convictions. And now, we must stand together and move the great world of Twitter forward.

This is the day of my confirmation as a Verified Account on Twitter. And on this day I feel a deep obligation to renew my pledges, my covenants with you, the people of the Twitterverse.

General Robert E. Lee said that "duty" is the sublimest word on the English language and I have come, increasingly, to realize what he meant. I SHALL do my duty to you, God helping, to every man, to every woman, yes, to every child who tweets. I shall fulfill my duty toward improving search and making sure you never see the fail whale so that no man shall ever have to refresh the page and no child shall even consider switching micro-blogging platforms.

Today I have stood, where once @aplusk stood, and taken an oath to my tweeters. It is very appropriate then that from this Home of the Hipsterocracy, this very Heart of the Great Anglo-Saxon Twitterverse, that today we sound the drum for freedom as have our generations of forebears before us done, time and time again through history. Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon Twitter. In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny...and I say...segregation today...segregation tomorrow...segregation forever.

The way that negroes use Twitter is disgusting and revealing. We will not sacrifice our children to any such type of hashtags--and you can write that down. The FCC could be better used guarding the safety of Foursquare, where it is even unsafe to check in without fear of being immediately surrounded by blipsters. I was safer on MySpace during the mid-2000s, than the people of the Twitterverse are when they tweet about Michael Jackson!

Let us send this message back to @ev by our representatives who are with us today...that from this day we are standing up, and the heel of tyranny does not fit the neck of an upright man...that we intend to take the offensive and carry our fight for freedom across the Twitterverse, wielding the balance of power we know we possess in the Twitterverse...that WE, not the insipid bloc of tweeters of some sections...will determine in the next list of recommended users, who shall have the most followers...That from this day, from this hour...from this minute...we give the word of a race of honor that we will tolerate their bad grammar and oversharing in our face no longer...and let those certain judges put that in their opium pipes of power and smoke it for what it is worth.

In united effort we were meant to live under the Twitter terms of service...and each race, within its own framework has the freedom to @reply, to hashtag, to post twitpics...to ask for and receive deserved help from others of separate racial stations. This is the great freedom of Twitter's founding fathers...but if we amalgamate into the one unit as advocated by the social media blogs, then the enrichment of our lives, the freedom for our development, is gone forever. We become, therefore, a mongrel unit of one under a single all powerful trending topic, and we stand for everything...and for nothing.

The true brotherhood of America, of respecting the separateness of others, and uniting in effort, has been so twisted and distorted from its original concept that there is a small wonder that hashtags like #bitchplease are winning the world.

We invite the negro citizens of the Twitterverse to work with us from their separate racial station, as we will work with them, to develop, to grow in individual freedom and enrichment. We want jobs and a good future for BOTH races, the functionally illiterate and the overly witty. There must be a place for both professional athletes and social media professionals...for we all have too much time on our hands.

I promise you that I will try to make you proud of my Verified Account status. I promise you that, as Twitter gives me certain special features, I will make sure that whites never have to see negro trending topics or @replies. A steady diet of tweets about bacon, technology, and self-referential humor will rule the day.

And my prayer is that the Father (@ev) who reigns above us will bless all the people of this great Twitterverse, both white and black.

I thank you.