Farewell to a strange, Twitter-obsessed year
WASHINGTON >> The strangeness of 2022 was exemplified by the extravagant investment of time, brain cells and media passion in fretting about Twitter. This medium, which humanity progressed without for 10 millennia, suddenly seemed to some worrywarts as vital as oxygen and proteins, and as perishable as the planet. Progressives, constantly hungering for cataclysms (“Democracy is dying!” “Earth is boiling!”), worried that an end of politically motivated, government-influenced curating of content on Twitter, which is a 16-year-old adolescent, might doom this 246-year-old nation. Only 23 percent of Americans, disproportionately progressives, use Twitter, and 25 percent of the 23 percent generate 97 percent of the tweets.
Elon Musk’s culling of Twitter employees so terrified Robert Reich, the former labor secretary’s numeracy lapsed: Musk, Reich tweeted, “fired half of Twitter’s workforce and drove off even more.” The president’s arithmetically challenged press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said her boss has created “ten thousand million jobs,” 2 billion more than the world’s population.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency denied that Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling explained its recommendation that, if nuclear war seems imminent, Americans taking shelter should practice social distancing and wear masks. FEMA says its “nuclear explosion” guidelines predate the war in Ukraine.
This year was replete with reminders that we increasingly live in a “permission society” that requires government’s approval to do even sensible things. For example, when Hurricane Ian ripped the roofs off many Floridians’ homes,
Terence Duque, a Texas roofer, hastened to Florida’s Charlotte County to ply his suddenly much-needed trade. This commercial activity between consenting adults got Duque arrested by the County’s Economic Crimes Unit for being useful: for conducting business without — wait for it — a Florida license.
Great 2022 moments in identity politics: Billionaire Rick Caruso, running for mayor of Los Angeles (which is 49.1 percent “Hispanic or Latino”) against Karen Bass, who is Black, disputed a debate moderator’s assertion that the next mayor would be “an African American woman or a White man.” Caruso said he was “Latin,” because of his Italian heritage. A Minneapolis teachers union contract stipulated that if public school layoffs are necessary, White teachers will be terminated before “educators of color.” The Oregon Health Authority’s office of equity and inclusion delayed a meeting because “urgency is a white supremacy value.” The University of Kansas offered a course in “Angry White Male Studies.” The number of colleges and universities that require or encourage Indigenous “land acknowledgment” (saying the institution occupies stolen land): too numerous to count. The number that are returning the land: zero.
The Associated Press’s style mavens said “pregnant women” is acceptable phrasing, although “pregnant people” is more inclusive and preferable to “overly clinical” language such as “people with uteruses” or “birthing people.” In Springfield, Mo., the gendertheory training program for teachers encourages them to assume “gender is a universe” that includes “nonbinary,” “pansexual” and “polyamorous.” Although a Black member of Duke’s volleyball team claimed she was “racially heckled throughout the entirety of the match” at Brigham Young University, no one else was found to have heard this, and a video of the event recorded no evidence of it. Still, the usual people were as theatrically dismayed by it as they had been by actor Jussie Smollett’s fictitious encounter with American racism. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says racism is “physically built into some of our highways.”
A Duke assistant director of “diversity, equity, inclusion” programs apologized to “the government of China” (a.k.a. the Chinese Communist Party) for an “incorrect and insensitive” email identifying China and Tibet as different countries. A Syracuse University dean performed a similar grovel for the same offense.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, scourge of the plutocracy, last year had “Tax the Rich” written on the back of her custom-made dress at the Met Gala, where a table cost up to $300,000. This year, arrested at an abortion rights protest, the histrionic congresswoman walked with her hands behind her back, as though handcuffed, until she passed some supporters, to whom she gave a clenched-fist salute.
Finally, let’s revisit Twitterdom. In yet another unsuccessful attempt to become a senator from Ohio, Josh Mandel tweeted, “The last letters in Democrat: RAT. The last letters in Republican: I CAN. That should tell you everything you need to know.” About Mandel, yes. One 2022 tweet (from the Financial Times’s Edward Luce) almost made Twitter seem worth the fuss: “Kanye West and Nick Fuentes are about to be run over by a train and you could only save one. What kind of cocktail would you order?” Gin martini.