To Tweet or Not to Tweet

This week I learned a new word. Ok, it's not exactly a new word in my ever-expanding lexicon. I grew up watching Tweety bird and Snoopy cartoons and I've probably imitated a bird sound once or twice in my life, but this new definition takes the cake. Tweeting. The word alone makes me laugh. Then toss in the meaning behind it and it becomes one of the most hilarious and awe-inspiring words I've heard. I was watching The Daily Show this week when Jon Stewart mentioned a serious case of Tweeting that was taking place during Obama's Address to Congress last Wednesday. What is this tweeting and how does one tweet, I thought to myself. Jon explained that quite a few of our elected officials were logging into their Twitter accounts during the speech to update their status, or in Twitter speak - "What Are You Doing?" Well, according to their Twitter pages, most of them were doing everything BUT paying attention to their President. Didn't their mothers teach them better than this:
Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers (R-WA) tweeted, "On the House floor for Pres Obama's historic speech to Congress. I have the honor of escorting him. If you're watching, I'm wearing white."
- Oh Cathy, white before Memorial Day??! Someone call Tim Gunn.
"I am sitting behind Sens. Graham and McCain," Rep. Robert Wittman (R-VA) tweeted.
- Clearly Robert is one of the cool kids. Sounds like some VIP seats to me!
"Now Supreme Ct. I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsburg. She looks good," Sen. McCaskill said a few minutes later.
- Last time I heard a big wooohoo it was from Vicki of the Real Housewives of the OC. Keep those woohoo's coming Senator McCaskill.
And as the speech began, one tweet by Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) took a unique tone.
"Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren't going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour," it read.
- If only us real people could talk about our bosses at work this way.
"Some Republican Senators are standing and clapping, including McCain. Great!" Blumenauer said, adding a few minutes later, "One of the teleprompters is directly between the President and me. But I am sure he delivered the line about stark budget realities to me."
- Or you could just be suffering from delusions of grandeur, Blumenauer.

Which leads me to my main point. Delusions of grandeur...perhaps that is what is behind this revolution of TMI. If we're all honest with ourselves, we really don't think that people care THAT MUCH what we are doing right now, do we? Sure we all dable in it on Facebook and Myspace, but this Twitter situation really gets down to the basics. No photos, no comments, no BS...just a venue every minute of the day to tell everyone you know exactly what you are doing at that very minute. Maybe I'm just raining on the parade because my daily activities aren't worth tweeting about, but I don't even think I want to read about what the people who are supposed to be running our country are doing. I just want them to do it. And maybe put down that Blackberry and listen to the President every now and then. They can resume their tweeting during recess.