LOL/WTF/SMH/FTW, Or: How I Learned To Hate Awful Journalism and Love the Sky-High Blood Pressure That Comes with Reading It

Quick: what's the worst thing to happen to Mizzou in 2012-13?

The tragic deaths of nine current students? Nope. The athletic department briefly coddling a suspected rapist, and large sections of the student body begging for his reinstatement to the basketball team? Of course not. That one football game against Alabama? Close, but no cigar. The totality of one Kalen Wagoner's sports columns? Maybe second-worst, but still not it.

No, according to my esteemed former employers at The Maneater, it was actually the ebonics and improper grammar displayed on the student body president's Twitter. (BEWARE: block of text ahead because the stupid website won't allow me to directly link to the upcoming section.)

MSA President Twitter was an embarrassment

If you scroll back through the @MSAPresident Twitter account, you’ll see tweets congratulating student organizations, announcing events and informing students about the Missouri Students Association. Or, at least you will until you scroll back past Dec. 14. Don’t let Nick Droege’s name and photo fool you — these are the tweets of our former MSA President Xavier Billingsley.

For an entire year, Billingsley shared his stream of consciousness to the student body, tweeting things like “My dad’s boots are awesome #southernproper” on Feb. 3 and “Yeah buddy rolling like a big shot” on July 1 and even “Ahhhhhhhh I’m so crunk right now #msaelections” on Nov. 7.

It's fun to relive Billingsley’s @MSAPresident Twitter feed: We celebrated the holidays with Billingsley, such as on May 5, “Philisophy is that wall blocking me from Cinco De Mayo and my sombrero.” He reminisced about his “ratchet days” on Sept. 11, cheered on Team USA in the Olympics on July 27 with “AYYYEYEEEEE #TeamUSA” and celebrated joining the SEC on July 1 with “Ya boy is getting emotional with it. #SEC14 #SoProud.”

Through all the misspelled, irrelevant and occasionally incoherent @MSAPresident tweets, Billingsley had us laughing.

But should we be laughing?

The MSA president before Billingsley, Eric Woods, called out Billingsley’s tweets saying, “Was that a sentence? Is that what they’re teaching you in your classes this semester?” to which Billingsley responded, “SHUT UP ERIC!”

These tweets would have been fine had Billingsley tweeted them from his personal account, @DJXJ – which he often invited “join the party and follow him at” – but they were from the MSA President account, which is read by prospective students, administrators and the entire student body.

More importantly, though, the MSA president is supposed to represent the student body through all his interactions, including Twitter.

Billingsley didn’t seem to think so. Instead, his Twitter feed was unprofessional and used for fun. Billingsley said he has the “best tweets west of the Mississippi.” – we’ll at least give you the most interesting, XJ.

(RELEVANT GIF.)

He said "ratchet." He told someone to "SHUT UP" in ALL CAPS! He had the nerve to USE HIS TWITTER ACCOUNT FOR FUN. Gosh, what's the proper punishment? I vote we force feed him pages from the AP Stylebook until his stomach bursts. That sounds about right.

If Billingsley's words kept some Yahweh-forsaken helicopter mommy in Ladue from sending little Billy to our big, bad SEC college town, then good. I'm sure he's enjoying SLU immensely. Better for him to mix with Jesuits than black frat guys who use words not approved by Webster's on a totally voluntary social networking account.

"But should we be laughing," you ask? Sure! Why the fuck not! If anything, applaud the man for his creativity. Anyone can tweet out links to press releases or inspirational YouTube videos. It takes a truly special man to pull off the use of #southernproper.

Were the tweets unexpected from such an exalted political figure? Sure. Were they in any way harmful? Nope. Sexist? Uh-uh. Racist? Not nearly as much as the editorial above. Funnier than the "approval matrix" shamelessly stolen from eminent journalistic outfit Buzzfeed that appeared in the same section? You betcha.

Lump The Maneater in with Slate, Salon, The Atlantic, etc: basically, every other awful "liberal" media outlet (that I happen to regularly consume). For fuck's sake, there are enough real crises already; no reason to get so sanctimonious over manufactured trauma. It's time to quit writing whiny, circlejerky editorials espousing the virtues of political correctness that themselves patronize certain racial or class demographics. Maybe then good, sensible 'Murricans could take the craft of journalism seriously again.

Smart People Discuss Politics

"You know, I think it’s about envy. I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a President encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent—you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God. The American people, I believe in the final analysis, will reject it." - Mitt Romney

"Taking a quick trip through Twitter reveals that the same people who don't trust the government to verify that their food, drink and pharmaceuticals aren't deadly, to teach their children or to administer their healthcare are—as is the case with at least 100,000 Iraqis and counting—absolutely king-shit stoked to let the U.S. government decide when to murder the fuck out of non-white people." - Mobutu Sese Seko

"It is considered declasse in our higher politics to mention this, but there actually is a class war underway in America, and it doesn't need politicians to stoke it. It happens in millions of battles every day, over mortgages, and college loans, and retirement, and the granite-like impassibility of the country's elites in the face of what's happening to the great mass of people. Now, it's possible that our firmly purchased political system may be able to continue to divert the energies of that war in the directions most amenable to maintaining the status quo. (Blame the black people, the regulators, the drum circles, public school teachers, the Community Reinvestment Act, Van Jones!) But, sooner or later, someone's going to be desperate enough - or bold enough - to grab that energy and ride it to glory, and we all better goddamn hope that person has a good heart, because those kind of things can go awfully badly wrong. What the Wall Street casino is playing with is not house money. It belongs to all of us. They are gambling not merely with currency, but with the stability of the political system. Someone is going to pay." - Charlie Pierce

- Yours Truly

Day 1: We, The Fucked People

(Editor's note: Inspired by a different blog of greater repute, we have decided to exhaustively chronicle our summer in Highland. Most posts will probably have nothing to do with Highland; its just an excuse to blog more and something to fill these long days. We'll call it (85) Days of Summer (in Highland (with 100% Less Zooey Deschanel)). Or something like that. Enjoy it more than that shitty movie, motherfuckers.)

* * *

I come from a family of political animals. Both of my grandpas are passionate Reagan-hating liberals, peculiar for middle class white men from rural towns surrounding Saint Louis, and they make sure everyone related to them felt the same way. I certainly do.

But even though most of my family members are Democratic partisans, they can't really explain why. That's not necessarily wrong, and surely not uncommon in America, where politics is too upsetting a subject to dwell on - but it is harmful. Mix in media narratives and the apolitical animal is easily misled.

My mom wants Mitt Romney's DNA checked. She swears he's too robotic to be a real person, and that that's the reason she can't vote for him. It's a complaint that's common (and also true I suspect). But is it really valid? Can the President of the United States, the Leader of the Free World, the man with the biggest job of any human that's ever walked the earth, be a normal guy (or gal)? And, more importantly, why would we want him to be normal?

Since the arrival of blowhards like Bill O'Reilly and Chris Matthews on cable TV, we've heard that presidential candidates have to connect with the common man. Go out, shake hands, hold babies, touch, feel America's pain.

You gotta have empathy. It's why Ronald Reagan will be on the $10 bill some day, why Bill Clinton is held up as a model politician, why a decent dude like John Kerry could never be President but a scumbag like John Edwards could lead the polls. Because the average American, after all, not only doesn't understand politics, he also doesn't want to. He isn't seen as an intellectual being but as an instinctual soul,  a stupid "Joe the Plumber," only desiring someone who can understand his feelings if not fix his problems. It's a pernicious prophecy, propagated by everyone from Rush to Dr. Phil, and it's turned out to be self-fulfilling.

All the talk about connecting with the common man seems grossly misplaced, considering the President actually deals with other hardly-human politicians and lunatic dictators and media fiends and especially billionaire businessmen. The presidency is an uncommon job that forces its holder to do uncommon things and cooperate with uncommon people. So why should a common man hold it?

I won't ever get to have a beer with the president, so why should I use that as a litmus test to choose who gets my vote? Do I really want people like my friends in the Oval Office? Do I want Ricky, who would shun speeches and interviews in favor of animated gif propaganda? Do I want Amanda, who would make Russian our official language and generally behave like some horrid combination of Margaret Thatcher and Imelda Marcos? Do I want Mr. Strong, who wants to TAKE ALL THE OIL AND NUKE THE FUCK OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST?*

Or do I want my president to be a Harvard graduate, calm and cool in the face of overwhelming pressure, experienced in wheeling and dealing with the weirdos who control our fucked world, an exceptional man fit for an exceptional job?

I won't vote for Mitt Romney in November, but not because he doesn't appeal to my emotions. I'll vote against him because of his pledge to repeal health care reform, his proposal to let the auto industry go bankrupt, his opposition to gay marriage, and his shitty rendition of the Baha Men classic "Who Let the Dogs Out?"

My mom won't vote for Mitt Romney because she doesn't like his wooden posture, slicked-back hair, flat voice tone, awkward mannerisms. Sure, she cares about the things I do too, but she doesn't understand them because the commentators she watches ignore them in favor of cheap, diversionary gossip. And as long as this continues, as long as politics prizes personality over policy, we further lose track of what really matters and lose hope of ever making things better.

*Actually, yes. I would definitely vote for all three of these people.