An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Mouth Breathing Tweeter.

The first time you encounter his racist or sexist or generally offensive tweets you think you have his measure. He’s an arsehole, and you’re tempted to take him on, tweet for tweet. But as you read down his timeline, you realise that it isn’t that simple, because, for want of a better word, he is.

His timeline is one of threats and insults to celebrities and politicians, just barely structured in something vaguely resembling English. Such is his challenged mental faculty that he has rows with his public utilities not through customer service or by email, but by Twitter, revealing to all of us his struggle to deal with day to day life.

Your offence and anger at his obnoxious comments dissipates as you realise that Twitter is all he has, his excited just barely fingertip touch at people he sees on the telly, the only thing that resembles anything close to equality with all those people around him everyday with their newspapers and big words.

Were it not for Twitter, he’d be the village idiot in some small town, the young man “known to Gardai” not as a bad one but as a source of head shaking and sympathy for his poor parents, who are such good people. Were it not for Twitter, he could be dead in a ditch, frozen to death having been incapacitated by alcoholic poisoning, or hanging by his own belt from a door, trousers around his ankles after reading about sexual misadventure on the internet.

So cut him some slack. Twitter is all he has.

4 thoughts on “An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Mouth Breathing Tweeter.

  1. I am impressed. “Look at Yer man, with the beard on him”. What an erudite nation we have, that can so accurately skewer political opinion. Jason you’ll have to start writing about polenta or something now.

  2. His failed political views are reviled by the country and his political aspirations went nowhere. He reposts his old blog posts endlessly, because for him new thoughts and ideas are difficult at this point in his life. The posts are characterised by a curious absence of comments. Standalone bathroom stall echo chambers.

    The world bewilders him. He pines for a time in history when he might have been respected, but no such time ever existed. He wanted to be a successful author and make regular appearances slobbering and lisping on radio programmes to spread his simple views. But none of that was even close to getting off of the ground.

    His primeval ways are summarised by his ridiculous little beard, which he grows to remind him of his youth when he had sexual vitality, when he was in the game. It explains his ape-like hatred of all people under 35. His wife might tug it affectionately and it makes him feel like a man.

    His isolated corner on the web is safe from public interaction and criticism. Sure better things are written for the local paper, so why should anybody care?

    What’s so missing from his life? Why is he shifting his own failures on to others? A lost soul with no chance for a different future for himself, his decisions in life now irreversible with what little time he has left. A man with no warmth or compassion. Ah, but don’t blame him bitterness. It’s all he has left.

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