idaho governor:column
Will the Real @ButchOtter Please Stand Up?
By Sharon Fisher, 5-01-09
The Idaho Twittersphere was, well, a-twitter this morning with news that @ButchOtter—a Twitter account set up to parody the governor—had been shut down and the real Idaho Governor’s office, which had been posting under @IdahoGov, had taken control of it.
Boise Tweeters familiar with the situation are tweeting this morning that representatives of the attorney general’s office were being sent to people’s offices in an attempt to find out who was behind the account, with threats being made about impersonation being a felony.
Twitter started a new policy earlier this year adding Twitter squatting and trademark infringement to its terms of use policies, after the problem had first started cropping up last fall. “Accounts with clear INTENT to mislead others will be immediately suspended,” the company said.
Posts from the fake @ButchOtter are no longer available on Twitter, but people who had been following it said they were clearly satirical. The consensus this morning was also that while it was reasonable for Otter to want to take over the name, sending out attorneys to people’s workplace was overkill and showed a lack of humor that could make it more difficult for the Governor to attract votes from this segment of the population.
There is now a @ButchOtter_1 on Twitter, with 179 followers, with a note that the account had been suspended due to “strange activity,” Twitter’s generic message for such issues. (Interestingly, a search for “ButchOtter” on Twitter brings up only this site, not the real one.)
Thus far, the real @ButchOtter—who is following only one person, @IdahoGov, and has 69 followers—has made two posts, one pointing people to his website and one pointing people to a swine flu website, which was a duplicate of the posting made by @IdahoGov.
[End of article]Parody is common form of our political dialog as evidenced by the likes of Saturday Night Live, many web sites, and, with the rise of social media, the various social media outlets. Politicians are public figures and subject to criticism; seems like the Gov could have dealt with this form of expression rather than to suppress it. Time will show what actually happened, so I reserve judgment for now. However, I highly recommend he not pursue further action against those responsible for the parody. No good can come from suppression of thought. I hope we've learned that lesson before. I don't agree with the hate mongers like Rush Limbaugh, but I fiercely support their right to express their thoughts.
Comment By Erik Kingston, 5-01-09I wonder how soon they'll shut down @ButtOtcher?
Comment By nonesuch, 5-10-09Two parodies now exist (5/11/09): http://twitter.com/fauxButchOtter and http://twitter.com/doucheOtter. No idea/relationship with who created them, no promises on quality or humor or whether these share origins with the pre-unfunny ButchOtter.
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