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Friday, June 18, 2010

Twitness to An Execution

Twitter continues its ongoing invasion, occupation, and devastation of public discourse.

Gizmodo reports on Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff's frankly disgusting faux-sanctimonious real-time tweeting about Ronnie Lee Gardner's execution by firing squad.

I have little doubt that plenty of latter day American Imperialists are smacking their lips in anticipation of the brutal and bloody outpouring of tweeted reportage from the Colosseum of our prison-industrial complex for which Shurtleff's nasty little e-pustules promise to be the preface.

A demoralizing dehumanizing tide of tasteless jokes and "edgy" confessions of sexual arousal can be depended upon edifyingly to turn the stomachs of the self-appointed Serious (in a bad way) and the Hipsters (in a wanted way) from the spectators of America's serial ceremonial bloodlettings in the years to come. But how much more demoralizing will be the more "reflective" declarations of "Scary!" "Gross!" "sad :(" we can expect to accompany the fart jokes and orgasms, if twitter's appalling archive is any guide?

How little distinguishable is the real-time bumper sticker "The Punishment Is A Crime" in its actual substantial deliberative heft (however much I agree with the sentiment) from the cutesy announcements certain to come as well concerning the effects of an execution on one's digestion, or indeed to Shurtleff's own inaugural contribution to this already debased and debasing genre of chattering-tweetery, his pithy one-word he-man verdict, "Justice."

This is just another milestone, another millstone around our necks, in the ongoing voluntary evacuation of difficult deliberation and complex convivial multiculture by an already defiantly and gleefully and suicidally anti-intellectual populace, the better to be replaced by the discursive equivalent of a infant's gurgling or the spiel of a home shopping cable channel or a housecat's fleeting sensations of satisfaction and discomfort playing meaninglessly out over the course of any given day on the way to the grave.

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