How To Win On Social Media Like A World Champ (2018 Edition)

Social media has its good points.

For example, I have reconnected with people I haven't seen in thirty some odd years. Then I remembered why I disconnected from them.

Ha, ha. Just a joke.

Actually, it has been great seeing old friends and pointing out that I still have all my hair.

However, there is a downside to social media. Namely: people. In between posts of what was for supper and feet at the beach are arguments.

Not everybody on social media argues. Some people fuss, while others fight.

I can't put my finger on it, but it seems things really began going hyper hooky-bolooky on Facebook and Twitter when Donald J. Trump became President of The United States.

The President is legendary on Twitter himself. Some of his Tweets are, well, yeah, bless his heart, as the ladies say here in the South.

The problem is The Loyal Opposition is no more. No, it has morphed into the Resistance of The Panties Are Always Twisted Into A Knot.  If Trump is for something, these folks are against it, because Trump equals Hitler. Can't you see that?

They have managed to do something I thought was impossible: look worse than Trump.

Everything is a full-scale Book of Revelation Apocalypse and everything is going to Hell in a handbasket if we only had a hand basket because Trump put Tariffs on Canadian made hand baskets.

Of course, the Trump people object to this.

This leads to many long Facebook posts and Tweets.  I have decided to help people out and present an update to my 2012 classic "How To Argue On Social Media  Like A World Champ".  However, this time, I am giving advice on how to WIN.

1. The Most Important Rule:  Anyone who disagrees with you is stupid.

      2. Use as many swear words as possible.

3. Debate topics that nobody has ever debated before. For example: do animals have constitutional rights?

4. Grammar and spelling are not that important in Social Media. Except when you are in a debate. Then it is proper and fitting to point out all of the grammatical and spelling errors you can find. Find a way to work in the phrase: “Irregardless is not a word”, like you are Noah Webster.  You may not win friends, but you will win the argument.

5. Remember: The proper term for anyone who disagrees with you is "Nazi". 

6. My personal favorite: use as many question marks or exclamation points as possible with capital letters. Such as: “JOHN MCCAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!WHAT R U SAYING??????????????????????????????????” or “I GUESS TRUMP IS A STUPID NAZI RACIST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????????”   I learned in my 14 years of taking English classes that one question mark or exclamation point was sufficient.  I guess that is obsolete.

7. Never, Never, Never, Never, Never, Never concede a point. That means that you are a loser and that the other person is right and therefore, better than you.

8. Never acknowledge that the person you are disagreeing with is an actual human being with feelings. This makes you weak.  

      9.  Memes are effective tools.  They don't have to make sense

10.  One bonus: if you are in a Tweet war with a celebrity on Twitter, they may re-Tweet your brilliant salvo for all the Twitter world to see.

11.  Research is not required.

12.  Neither is maturity.

13.  The good: if you get into a heated political discussion at work, punches might be thrown. On Facebook, the worse that can happen is that you get defriended.

   14.  Circular arguments are the best.

The Lion In The Winter

"Like a lion in the winter,  I can hear the summer call" ~ Hoyt Axton


Our favorite President Bill, Bill Clinton, made news last week.

In an interview with Craig Melvin on The Today Show, President Bill got all in a huff and wagged his crooked index finger because Mr. Melvin had the nerve to bring up Monica Lewinsky.

Quick history lesson:  In the 90's, President Bill had an "inappropriate relationship" with Monica Lewinsky.  In the 90's, "inappropriate relationship" meant President Bill had sex with Monica Lewinsky. Of course, if you know anything about President Bill, you know this devolved into a long national conversation about the meaning of the word "is"  and if a particular sexual act counts as sex since if it wasn't intercourse.  It was a difficult time to raise a child, even with a village.

President Bill and writer James Patterson were on The Today Show promoting their new book called  The President is Missing.  It is a novel. (For what it is worth, President Bill and James Patterson will be at The Cobb Energy Center on June 13th to discuss their book.)

Yeah, the book sounds like a bad idea, but I wish I was at the pitch meeting.

"You see, the President is a good old boy from some podunk Southern state that somehow gets an Ivy League education. He has a way with the ladies, despite his wife being some humorless Midwestern hag. Anyway, he has awesome sex with just about every woman in the world. Think combo Don Draper/Jethro Bodine.  I haven't come up with a superpower yet, except for the ability to talk endlessly for twenty hours. 

President Bill was expecting the typical interview of President Bill.  "You're so great, President Bill! Are you disappointed that you couldn't get your midnight basketball bill through Congress?"  Instead, he got a question about Monica Lewinsky.

In case you haven't heard, there's this thing going around called The #MeToo Movement which has caused a lot of powerful men to become suddenly unemployed. President Bill seems to have read about it only in passing.

Melvin asked President Bill if #MeToo has caused President Bill to think how differently he should have handled The Lewinsky Affair and if he feels any responsibility for the pain caused to Lewinsky, who has written she suffers from the type of PTSD that comes from a sexual relationship with The President of The United States.

President Bill:  "No, I felt terrible then, and I came to grips with it".  Way to go, Mr. President.

Melvin then asked if President Bill had apologized to Lewinsky.  The response was classic President Bill.

 "Yes, and nobody believes I got out of that for free. I left the White House $16 million in debt, but you typically have ignored gaping facts in describing this, and I bet you don’t even know them. This was litigated 20 years ago. Two-thirds of the American people sided with me. They were not insensitive to that. I had a sexual harassment policy when I was governor in the eighties. I had two women chiefs of staff when I was governor. Women were overrepresented in the attorney general’s office in the seventies, for their percentage in the bar. I have had nothing but women leaders in my office since I left. You are giving one side and omitting facts."

Only Bill Clinton could answer a question about apologizing to someone and add in the overrepresentation of women in the Arkansas Attorney General's Office in the seventies. The Washington Post could not find the exact percentage of women with law licenses in the seventies, but two decades after he was Attorney General it was twenty-two percent and it was probably way lower in 1974.

The Washington Post notes that Clinton didn't leave the White House $16 million in debt. The Post estimates that President Bill was probably "$4 or 5 million" in debt, however, The Clintons' joint 2001 tax return shows $16 million as their earned income.

When pressed about if he actually apologized to Lewinsky, President Bill said " (I've) apologized to everyone in the world.". Then Melvin asked President Bill if he owed Lewinsky a private apology, President Bill said he did not because he had already apologized to everyone in the world 20 years ago, dude.

Even though it was twenty years too late, it was good to see someone in the mainstream press willing to take on President Bill and his wagging crooked finger. The press sees him now as a lion in the winter. Once proud and powerful, now he's just vain and weak.

Well, this didn't go over to well and in rides our country's leading satirist, Stephen Colbert, to ask President Bill if he wanted a "do-over". Of course, everybody has been giving President Bill a mulligan ever since he gave that awful nomination speech for Michael Dukakis 30 years ago. That's his problem. He always got the second, third, fourth, or twentieth chance.

He told Colbert, "that was a very painful thing that happened 20 years ago, and I apologized to my family, to Monica Lewinsky and her family, and to the American people.”  Yes, it was just a thing that happened.  One day, he is the President of the United States and the next thing you know him and Monica are doing the West Memphis Mambo in the Oval Office.

President Bill obviously doesn't understand  The Me Too Movement is about standing up to men's exploitive and abusive behavior, no matter how powerful they are or how many women they employed in the Arkansas Attorney General's office in 1975.

That is what the President is missing.

Words

 When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal.  Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark.  The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.  - James 3:3-6

I really don't want to but I guess I'm going to have to comment about Roseanne Barr and Samantha Bee.

I'm hesitant because frankly, both stories are distasteful to the nth degree.

As you know by now, Barr composed an ugly tweet about Valerie Jarrett, one of former President's Obama's closest advisors. It was racist.

There was immediate blowback and Barr's rebooted "Roseanne" was canceled without any form of appeal.

Some people on my side of the river argued that Disney (owners of ABC) violated Barr's freedom of speech rights.  Well, no.

Barr has the right to say what she wants and Disney has the right to decide if they want to be associated with it or not. They decided Barr's tweet would damage their brand. Her musings on Valerie Jarrett just wasn't worth it.

Conservatives were so happy with this version of "Roseanne". It showed Trump voters as actual carbon-based life forms and not merely deplorables laying around in a basket.

But, as Admiral Ackbar famously said in "Star Wars": "It's a trap". The Right was relying on a celebrity famous for her out and out weirdness to carry the banner that conservatives are people, too, doggone it, and you'll like us once you get to know us.

We were so desperate in need of validation from the entertainment elite, we forgot about Barr being a 9/11 truther, running for president in 2012 with Cindy Sheehan, and her tweets like this one about people who eat Chick-Fil-A:   “Anyone who eats Shit Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ”.   Yup, that's a person I want presenting my case to the general public.

Of course, you had those who said Barr accurately portrays Trump voters. These are the same people who argue you can't judge a group by its fringe members.  But when you have a Republican President, hey, all of that is thrown out the window.

After that, Samantha Bee, a talentless and humorless comedian who has a show on TBS titled Full Frontal called Ivanka Trump, a really bad name.  She was allowed to keep her job after she apologized. (Barr apologized too and then blamed Ambien).

The Right is furious because they see this as a double standard.  Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said TBS should fire Bee.

Jen Chaney of Vulture said,  "The White House’s demand that TBS cancel Full Frontal is an effort to create false equivalencies that foster mistrust of a media they characterize as left-leaning lie mongers. It’s divisive, it’s dangerous, and it’s absolutely par for the Trump-administration course."

Yes, the Trump Administration is creating false equivalencies to foster mistrust of the media's late night comedians.

Chaney points out, "Her use of the C-word to describe Ivanka Trump stemmed from her criticism of the First Daughter–slash–senior presidential advisor tweeting a photograph of herself and one of her children in the midst of a news cycle focused on immigrant children being separated from their parents."  Sigh.

Somebody tweeted a picture of little illegal kids inside of cells that looked like dog kennels. Oh, the horrors of Trump's Dystopian America.  People must be cussed at! Now!  When it was learned the picture which taken in 2014, during the administration of Saint Barack The First, Twitter went all Emily Litella:  never mind.

My favorite defense of  Bee by Chaney was "Last year, she used the same word to describe Woodrow Wilson during her 'Not The White House Correspondents' Dinner' and nobody cared."   Next time I get in trouble for calling somebody a name, I am going to say: "Hey, I used the same word to describe Woodrow Wilson and nobody cared".

Bee is way too strident in her comedy for me even to halfway pay attention to her. James Lileks discusses this type of comedy:

"It goes back to George Carlin. You can find antecedents galore, of course, but Carlin had that famous routine that summed up the new thinking: the seven words you couldn’t say. But they’re just words! Isn’t that ridiculous? (See also Bruce, Lenny.) Just aspirations shaped by a muscle in your mouth, and they have such power they can’t be used? 

 Isn’t that ridiculous? Carlin wasn’t the first to try to say the naughty words, but he gave humor to his generation’s belief that authenticity counts in speech, and can be defined by its lack of shackles and adherence to old courtesies. What mattered was truth, man, and the truth didn’t set you free, it made you angry, and the angrier you were the more people were obliged to listen and nod along. Anger gave you authenticity, and swearing was a signifier of anger."

Lileks goes on to say, "1. Everyone slips up at some time. 2. The slip-ups are often revelatory of the person’s true character".   Barr's slip up revealed her true character: she's a total loon.

Bee didn't have a slip-up. This was from a scripted show that finds its authenticity in anger that Donald Trump is President and therefore, swearing is all right, even noble because you are swearing at the right people.

I would have fired her. Then again, I wouldn't have hired her. The same goes for Roseanne.