Barack Obama
Great questions that won’t make it to Obama’s Twitter town hall
Of the over 25,000 questions tweeted in, only a handful will be selected, but probably not these hilarious gems
FILE - In this June 3, 2010 file photo, President Barack Obama uses his BlackBerry e-mail device as he walks at Sidwell Friends school in Bethesda, Md. Call him the Digital Candidate: President Barack Obama has asked supporters to use Facebook to declare Im in for his re-election campaign and has begun using Twitter to communicate with his nearly 9 million followers. If Obama broke new ground using email, text messages and the Web to reach voters in 2008, Obama version 2.0 aims to harness the expansive roles that the Internet and social media are playing now in voters lives. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)(Credit: AP) President Obama is taking part in a Twitter town hall Wednesday afternoon, answering questions posed via Twitter with a focus on the economy. Over 25,000 Twitter users so far have sent in a questions using the #askobama hashtag. Of these questions, a few will be selected algorithmically (so that the most popular themes are addressed) and by a team of curators chosen by Twitter including, student writers, economics professors, business writers and bloggers from both sides of the political spectrum.
We can be sure, therefore, that even if Obama is confronted with some tough questions (which is in itself pretty doubtful, as the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza notes), some of the best, funniest tweets that have been sent his way will not make it to the town hall. But we’ll give them (some of) the publicity they deserve here:
- HuffPost Hill: Have you ever heard the wolf cry to the blue corn moon? Can you paint with all the colors of the wind? #AskObama
- Slate’s Dave Weigel: Who put the bomp in the bomp, bomp, bomp, bomp? #askobama #failedstimulus
- Wonektte: Hey Obama, is your refrigerator running? Better go catch it! (And lock it in Gitmo, which you promised to close.) #askobama #jerk
Other tweeters were equally creative:
- You guys are asking the wrong questions. Peanut M&Ms or Plain? #AskObama #CNNStyle
- What is being done to stop the runaway meltdown of the Nancy Grace reactor? #AskObama
- #AskObama Do all dogs really go to heaven? Because that seems impractical. Some dogs? Sure. Most dogs? Fine. But ALL dogs? Come on.
- Would you say you’re more of a Carrie or a Charlotte? I call dibs on being Miranda. #askobama
- Anyone who expects serious questions in a forum that limits people to 140 characters or less is crazy. Am I right? #AskObama
- Do you have any moral objection to polygamy?
- Pop quiz, hotshot. There’s a bomb on a bus. If the bus drops below 50mph, it blows up. What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO? #askobama
- Does being precede consciousness, or does consciousness precede being? #AskObama
Natasha Lennard covers the Occupy movement for Salon. A British-born, Brooklyn-based journalist, she has been covering Occupy Wall Street since before the first sleeping bag was unrolled in Zuccotti Park. One of the first journalists arrested at an Occupy action, she has managed to enrage Andrew Breitbart, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. You can follow her on Twitter (@natashalennard), and email her any Occupy updates/videos/ideas to natasha.lennard@gmail.com More Natasha Lennard.
