"It's Only Words..." Or Not

In the same way that any discussion on an internet forum is eventually bound to bring up comparisions to someone's behaviour to that of Hitler and the Third Reich, any discussion about race in any form is bound to see one of the parties say something they end up regretting.

So it was with Diane Abbott, whose main regret might not be what she said but more that it has given ammunition to various right-wing lunatics to say “there you are! Black people are racist against white people too!” to justify their own prejudices and badly-written bile against anyone who looks a bit different from them.

The real question, however, is why any politician would want to be on Twitter in the first place, seeing as it can so often be a one-way ticket to a very public execution. See Ed Milliband, whose attempt at paying respect to the passing of TV legend Bob Holness backfired spectacularly when he referred to the quizshow he hosted as “Blackbusters”. Has a single misplaced letter ever caused so much news coverage to the degree where the Sun ran it as a front page lead. I do wonder if the mistake was actually Milliband's, however, or that of some minion tasked with updating the Twitter feed on his behalf as I’d like to think the Leader of the Opposition has better things to do with his time.

Being a social media luddite, for the most part (after all, I’m writing this), I have to wonder exactly what people such as Milliband and Abbott get out of it. I can sort of see why people I know get involved – it’s certainly a handy way of getting certain messages (such as, having a spare ticket for a gig) out to a lot of people you know very quickly, but for anyone with any level of media profile it seems a huge minefield on which it’s only a matter of time before you step into trouble. Especially given there seems to be hacks constantly watching your every tweet, meaning your mishap is all over the world before you blink.

I don’t think Diane Abbott is a racist. Just stupid beyond belief for a person in authority, especially one so experienced. And yes, 140 letters isn't much to condense a point, which would surely suggest that you should be making it somewhere else. They should have learned the lesson John Cooper Clarke did when he wrote this wonderful poem, simply entitled 'Haiku':

To convey one's mood
In seventeen syllables
Is very diffic