Marion Barry’s Thousandth Tweet

Mayor-for-Life (or Crazy Uncle)
Marion Barry Jr. hit a milestone this morning
that he probably never imagined: He posted his thousandth tweet. His
milestone came amidst a
flurry of tweets trying to raise awareness (and perhaps
outrage?) about today’s pending election of an interim DC City Council
chair, following last week’s resignation of council chair
Kwame Brown. “WAKE UP DC! This is a very important day. Council members are voting for our next chair and vice chair. DO YOU KNOW WHO
THEY ARE VOTING FOR?” he asked this morning.

A Northern Virginia sports enthusiast dad,
@brucehallsports, asked back,
“You?”, causing
Barry to cross his thousandth tweet milestone with the reply,
“Hi Bruce! No, not me. Phil mendelson chair. Michael brown or
Vincent orange, vice
chair.”

The city’s apparent apathy and disinterest in the city
council election today has apparently become Barry’s latest bugaboo.
He’s spent much of this week tweeting about the upcoming
election (“Cant WIN among 600k voters so set it up 2 LOBBY among
only 13 ppl some 4 sale.And do it quick b4 voters
understand.#WAKEUPSPEAKUPDC
#RTthat”)
and even individually counseling DC voters on Twitter about the
council intrigue.

Barry joined Twitter just 212 days ago, on November
13, yet his tweeting last night showed how he’s mastered the form in
short
order: “Ya’ll there’s #sss going on down here. Smh. WAKE UP
DC,”
he wrote at 6:16 PM from his iPhone. The hashtag #SSS
translates on Twitter as “super serious shit” and SMH means “shaking
my head.”

Then later last night, he tweeted, “Whatever happens my love 4 DC is real &real deep.Make officials EARN the representative
right vote by vote. Not by backroom dealin among few.”

Since November Twitter has become one of his main
vehicles for communication—including addressing his
latest

controversies

and his recent health
scares.
As he said in one tweet, Southeast
DC tweets with swag—or as Barry called it:
“twaggin.”
Though,
not all of his communications have been so serious: Last
weekend, Barry tweeted, “Guys, I was coerced n2 seeing Snow White.
Gotta confess, it was an action-packed fairytale! Timeless
battle b/w good v evil.Hint:good wins;).”

Garrett M. Graff