Never On Sunday

This morning I learned of a Twitter hashtag called “#FuckYouWashington” and went to check it out. To my delight, it demonstrates that the teabaggers aren’t the only source of political anger in the country. As anywhere on Twitter, many tweets are content-free, but among those with something specific to say, the complaints in #FuckYouWashington are predominantly liberal, populist, and rooted in reality. Teabagger rallying cries like “Get government out of my Medicare” hardly appear at all. Just a quick read turns up such gems as:

#fuckyouwashington for punishing whistleblowers, bell-ringers, hacktivists, & journalists who tried to save you from yourself.
#fuckyouwashington for letting 47,000 die/yr without ANY Healthcare,while Saying we have the BEST Healthcare in the World
#FuckYouWashington for being willing to destroy the economy in order to defeat Obama.
#fuckyouwashington for making this tweet feel like it’s worth more than my vote

Also, I appreciate founder Jeff Jarvis’s observation “And now we’re talking about the fucking hashtag and fucking Twitter instead of fucking Washington. Nerds.”

That comment was necessary because #FuckYouWashington is trending, big time, and the nerd community is getting just as animated about trending as about the content. Or rather, it would be trending big time, if Twitter weren’t blocking #FuckYouWashington from the trending list. Conspiracy buffs like to accuse Twitter of doing so to suppress the populist outcry and help The Man, while Twitter claims it’s just concerned about obscenity in the hashtag’s title. Which is kind of a shame, if doing so helps hide real obscenities. Obscenities like 40% of US children relying on food stamps, a US president’s public approval of torture, and the world’s highest imprisonment rate shouldn’t be hidden away to protect delicate ears (eyes); they should be spread loud and often, to protect the real victims. And Washington should be reading it. Just sayin’.

Postscript: As of this posting, #FuckYouWashington has been transmogrified into #FYW, performing the same function without a four-letter word and without the visceral power of the tag. We’ll see whether it trends, too.