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;).”