“@POTUS Hello, Twitter! It’s Barack. Really! Six years in, they’re finally giving me my own account.
11:38 AM – 18 May 2015″”
This was the first tweet sent by President Barack Obama from the White House.
It was obviously dripping with racism, or at least the motivation to respond with it.
Within minutes, among the responses, were those that contained racist comments about the president and his wife, and a few threats to the president’s safety and well being, and that of his family as well.
The “N” word figured prominently in the tweets.
Some examples:
@POTUS What do you call the first black president of the United States? >Nigger
@POTUS So hello,nigger
@POTUS fuck off nigger
@POTUS nice job with the banner, gotta let everyone know that you’re some kinda communist nigger right?
@POTUS please stop being a nigger it’s bad
@POTUS fucking nigger hope he gets cancer bet his wife did it because shes a feminist
@POTUS SO WILL THE PERSON THAT CALLED YOU A NIGGER BE CHARGED WITH A HATE CRIME, LIKE WHEN GAYS ARE CALLED FAGGOTS?
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@POTUS #arrestobama #treason we need “ROPE FOR CHANGE” we still hang for treason don’t we?
@POTUS welcome to twitter nigger
@POTUS kill yourself you tree swinging nigger
@POTUS I’ll kill you in one day
Some people have obviously gotten so comfortable with the assumed anonymity of the internet, that they not only feel free to say the crassest things while hiding behind a pseudonym, but their assumption of this safety is so strong, that in their limited, low-informed world, they have no conception of the reality that they can be traced down, especially if they make death threats against a sitting president.
When I did my blog for a local Cape Cod news website, there was one commenter who used the comments section to personally, and childishly, attack others with whom he did not agree as he hid behind his pseudonym. He commented more on the other posters than he did on the topics, and his words about them, and quite often me, were totally uncalled for, highly derogatory, and personal.
He got particularly angry with one commenter who actually used his real name, some did, that he not only printed that person’s address, and phone number in a comment, but he included a link to a website page that not only gave the address of the other commenter, but a map to his home. This web page also contained the names, addresses, phone numbers, and occupations of his neighbors.
This so upset some of the other regular commenters, as did the fact that the editor and publisher of the page took no steps to block this commenter from being able to leave any posts, that one, who was struck by some obscure phrase or reference in one of this anonymous commenter’s posts one morning, was reminded of something he had read before, and within twenty-four hours the identity of the anonymous commenter was discovered and revealed in the comments section along with other pages this bully had been commenting on.
The anonymous commenter went away.
Now, if someone who, according to the anonymous commenter, lived in his mother’s basement where she fed him macaroni and cheese while he watched non-stop science fiction, read comic books, and occasionally attempted to have an intelligent exchange about a blog topic, was able to find out who he was within so short a time based on a single repeated phrase, how do these racist posters and those who have, and probably will, leave death threats on the president’s twitter page think they can evade the secret service and the NSA if they choose to go after them for those threats?
They may whine that any action taken against them is a violation of their First Amendment rights, and will assume conservative media will defend them, but regardless who the president is, you don’t get a pass when you threaten the life of a president.
But, hey, obviously, President Obama started this.
He sent a tweet.