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You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/oct/31/sandy-tweets-republican-comfortablysmug
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| Sandy tweets make Republican operative less @ComfortablySmug | Sandy tweets make Republican operative less @ComfortablySmug |
| (8 days later) | |
| • Many of the scariest false rumours gripping New York during Hurricane Sandy could be traced, it turned out, to a single Twitter user. As the water levels rose and the electricity cut out, the anonymous person behind the widely-followed @ComfortablySmug account convinced thousands that worse was on the way: that the whole of Manhattan would lose power; that the subway would be shut for a week; that power company workers were trapped inside a building; and that the stock exchange was under 3ft of water, a misconception that Piers Morgan spread far further via CNN. And so, as the urgent business of removing downed trees and draining flooded tunnels began, New York embarked on another vital task: ending the anonymity of the person who'd maliciously made everyone panic. It appeared to take Jack Stuef at Buzzfeed about six seconds to confirm that @ComfortablySmug was Shashank Tripathi, who conformed almost too perfectly to villainous stereotype by being both a Republican party operative and a hedge-fund manager. Late on Tuesday, Tripathi posted: "I wish to offer the people of New York a sincere, humble and unconditional apology. During a natural disaster that threatened the entire city, I made a series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets." No kidding. Tripathi was resigning, he said, from his job as campaign manager for New York Republican congressional candidate Christopher Wight, though his attempt at contrition didn't dissuade one city councilman, Peter Vallone, from saying criminal charges should be considered. "I hope the fact that I'm asking for criminal charges to be seriously considered will make him much less comfortable and much less smug," Vallone was quoted as saying. There is a lesson here for all of us: if you're an heartless liar looking to make people's lives slightly worse, don't choose a Twitter user name that will embarrass you when it all goes wrong. (Maybe something like @HeartlessLiar would be more appropriate?) | • Many of the scariest false rumours gripping New York during Hurricane Sandy could be traced, it turned out, to a single Twitter user. As the water levels rose and the electricity cut out, the anonymous person behind the widely-followed @ComfortablySmug account convinced thousands that worse was on the way: that the whole of Manhattan would lose power; that the subway would be shut for a week; that power company workers were trapped inside a building; and that the stock exchange was under 3ft of water, a misconception that Piers Morgan spread far further via CNN. And so, as the urgent business of removing downed trees and draining flooded tunnels began, New York embarked on another vital task: ending the anonymity of the person who'd maliciously made everyone panic. It appeared to take Jack Stuef at Buzzfeed about six seconds to confirm that @ComfortablySmug was Shashank Tripathi, who conformed almost too perfectly to villainous stereotype by being both a Republican party operative and a hedge-fund manager. Late on Tuesday, Tripathi posted: "I wish to offer the people of New York a sincere, humble and unconditional apology. During a natural disaster that threatened the entire city, I made a series of irresponsible and inaccurate tweets." No kidding. Tripathi was resigning, he said, from his job as campaign manager for New York Republican congressional candidate Christopher Wight, though his attempt at contrition didn't dissuade one city councilman, Peter Vallone, from saying criminal charges should be considered. "I hope the fact that I'm asking for criminal charges to be seriously considered will make him much less comfortable and much less smug," Vallone was quoted as saying. There is a lesson here for all of us: if you're an heartless liar looking to make people's lives slightly worse, don't choose a Twitter user name that will embarrass you when it all goes wrong. (Maybe something like @HeartlessLiar would be more appropriate?) |
| • Perhaps the most reassuring sign that America will emerge unbowed from Sandy's assault: the immediate eruption of partisan sniping, absurd conspiracy theories and accusations of media bias. "Does anyone else find it deliciously ironic that Hurricane Sandy…" begins Michael Walsh at the conservative bastion the National Review – but, on second thoughts, let's leave that one there. "The big federal government some say is needed to deal with big problems like Sandy went home early in DC yesterday and is mostly closed today," tweeted Fox News's Brit Hume. (Where to begin?) Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS producer who now pens book-length attacks on the "liberal media", wondered live on air: "Do you think that more than a few reporters are sort of wishing that the hurricane [had] hit Iowa and Ohio and Wisconsin?… Because that might help President Obama." Other hypotheses: it's a message from God about Israel; it's Obama using weather-manipulation to win the election; it's punishment for the "homosexual agenda" (thanks, Pastor John McTernan, of Defend and Proclaim the Faith Ministries!); or it's a plot to seize your guns. Not climate change, though. I mean, come on – this is no time for conspiracy theories. | • Perhaps the most reassuring sign that America will emerge unbowed from Sandy's assault: the immediate eruption of partisan sniping, absurd conspiracy theories and accusations of media bias. "Does anyone else find it deliciously ironic that Hurricane Sandy…" begins Michael Walsh at the conservative bastion the National Review – but, on second thoughts, let's leave that one there. "The big federal government some say is needed to deal with big problems like Sandy went home early in DC yesterday and is mostly closed today," tweeted Fox News's Brit Hume. (Where to begin?) Bernard Goldberg, the former CBS producer who now pens book-length attacks on the "liberal media", wondered live on air: "Do you think that more than a few reporters are sort of wishing that the hurricane [had] hit Iowa and Ohio and Wisconsin?… Because that might help President Obama." Other hypotheses: it's a message from God about Israel; it's Obama using weather-manipulation to win the election; it's punishment for the "homosexual agenda" (thanks, Pastor John McTernan, of Defend and Proclaim the Faith Ministries!); or it's a plot to seize your guns. Not climate change, though. I mean, come on – this is no time for conspiracy theories. |
| • If some screenwriter out there has already begun work on a movie about the storm, he or she won't be able to include the comments of Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: audiences will deem them too implausible. Brown, you'll recall, was the man whom George Bush famously praised for doing a "heckuva job" in his mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, yet in an interview with a Denver paper, conducted as Sandy bore down on the north east, he not only had the temerity to offer the current administration his advice – eyebrow-raising in itself – but suggested that Barack Obama was responding (can you guess?) too rapidly. "One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to DC so quickly, when in Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas? Why was this so quick? ... At some point, somebody's going to ask that question." FEMA's current administrator, Craig Fugate, responded tartly that that it's "better to be quick than to be late". Which is a widely applicable rule of thumb when it comes to emergency response, actually. Might it possibly be time for Michael Brown to stop giving advice on such topics? | • If some screenwriter out there has already begun work on a movie about the storm, he or she won't be able to include the comments of Michael Brown, the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency: audiences will deem them too implausible. Brown, you'll recall, was the man whom George Bush famously praised for doing a "heckuva job" in his mishandling of the response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005, yet in an interview with a Denver paper, conducted as Sandy bore down on the north east, he not only had the temerity to offer the current administration his advice – eyebrow-raising in itself – but suggested that Barack Obama was responding (can you guess?) too rapidly. "One thing he's gonna be asked is, why did he jump on this so quickly and go back to DC so quickly, when in Benghazi, he went to Las Vegas? Why was this so quick? ... At some point, somebody's going to ask that question." FEMA's current administrator, Craig Fugate, responded tartly that that it's "better to be quick than to be late". Which is a widely applicable rule of thumb when it comes to emergency response, actually. Might it possibly be time for Michael Brown to stop giving advice on such topics? |
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