| A while ago, when Hank Gilbert switched to the race for Agriculture Commissioner, Phillip Martin tweeted, "Whatever, @Todd_Staples, you're an idiot and everyone knows it."
I retweeted Phillip, as did several others. We were all promptly blocked from following the Texas Agriculture Commissioner, and I thought that was it. Although we may or may not have been partially-joking in our name-calling, Staples validated us when he blocked several of his constituents. Just some normal idiocy, I guess.
But yesterday, as I was procrastinating from some school work, I noticed that one @GovernorPerry has blocked me, too. (I imagine it was prompted a while ago from this tweet.) I'll call Rick Perry a lot of names, but idiot is not one of them. (Maybe crazy? Misguided? Tea-bagger?)
There has to be something more. But it seems just that a couple of our statewide office holders have thin skins.
I understand the tweets I made fail to serve as good examples of constituent-office holder relations. In fact, they shouldn't serve as example of that. They were politically charged tweets meant to bash a couple Republicans. That blocking me (or other Democrats) was the immediate response, though, shows that our Republican office holders don't understand the truest beauty twitter holds for government. They clearly are using their twitter accounts much more for campaign or personal purposes, and they miss the point. As Rick Perry closes in on 20,000 followers, I hope he learns.
Twitter, while becoming an ultimate political tool, should also be utilized as a constituent service tool. As a constituent, I want to know what my representatives are thinking. I want to converse with them. If I held elected office, I would want to afford my constituents the opportunity to see what I think is important, to ask me questions, and to view my thoughts on government, etc. With a blog and a twitter account, Representative Aaron Peña might do this best.
By quickly blocking constituents, Todd Staples and Rick Perry show that they don't think constituent relations are a useful facet of twitter.
As I said, I understand them disliking my tweets and wanting to discourage tweets of such an attack nature. But blocking doesn't discourage, it encourages. Instead, they could kindly request more civility. They could engage in conversation. They could engage with their constituent. I may be a Democrat, but I live in Texas, too.
Governor Perry and Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples are apparently politicians who care primarily about politics, though, not the people they serve. And their politics is of the non-Texan, thin-skinned variety, too. |
