The John Rich/Clay Aiken Tweet War, Translated

Well, well, well,  just when I fear this year's installment of Celebrity Apprentice has given us all the material possible for this blog, along comes a silly little tweet war between Celebrity Apprentice Season Four winner John Rich and this year's runner-up, Clay Aiken.  By the time I write this, every gossip column in the universe has reported about the terrible, shocking racist comments Clay made, and a handful, like The Inquisitr, actually bothered to read what he said and have interpreted his comments correctly.

What we have here, I think, is a failure to communicate.  Clearly Clay and John are simply not speaking the same language; Clay is speaking the language of Snark, and John is babbling in the tongue known among both Democrats and Republicans as the language of Deliberate Misleading Opportunism.  (Partisans on both sides know this dialect well.)  Well, in an effort to promote clarity, so that everybody may be properly understood, I would like to offer up the Snark Speech and Opportunism Lingo to Plain English Translator.  Let's turn this thing on and see what these two guys were really saying.

28 Aug Clay Aiken ‏@clayaiken

Playing drinking game with my brother now. We drink every time we see a black person on screen at the RNC convention. #soberasamormon

Translated:  My brother and I are watching the RNC convention, and we've noticed something really disturbing.  There aren't that many black people here.  If one were to drink every time we saw a black person at this political convention, we'd never get drunk.  Gee, it's a shame that so few people of color see anything of value to them with this group of potential leaders. I think I'll make a joke about it.

 

28 Aug John Rich ‏@johnrich

@clayaiken:@cowboytroy We drink every time we see a black person at the RNC//CLAY! You should be ashamed for racist comments like THAT!WOW. 

Translated: Oh, look, Clay used a collection of words that could come across as being a racial slur if used in a manner and context very different from what we had here.  Most notably, he's pointed out that there aren't that many black people at the Republican Convention.  Well, he's attacked the political party to which I am affiliated, so I am going to try to make him look bad by deliberately misinterpreting what he has said.  What?  Everybody does it during an election year.  

Subsequent posts on twitter:  

Translated: Ditto!  Ditto!  If John Rich thinks Clay Aiken is a racist, it must be true! Somebody tell Arsenio! Somebody tell his fans! Somebody tell Obama! The sky is falling, the sky is falling!  

28 Aug John Rich ‏@johnrich

And to finish it off, @clayaiken hashtags soberasamormon? I thought your charity was for inclusion, not EXCLUSION. What happened?

Oh, goody.  Look.  Starting a fake fight on twitter got us both a lot of publicity.  Good, I like attention.  How can I get more?  I know, I'll imply that his charity is a sham.  That will rile things up!  Nothing to stir up a ruckus like a bunch of angry Claymates. 

 8 Aug Clay Aiken ‏@clayaiken

My charity is. Why isn't your party? ;-)   

Translated:  Cut the crap, John, you knew exactly what I meant the first time.   But just in case there's any further confusion....

  Clay Aiken ‏@clayaiken

@johnrich I think that a party that is hoping to represent and lead a country as diverse as America is should not be homogenous as the GOP 

Translated: But really, wasn't I funnier the first time I implied this? 

In the meantime, I suggest that we change the potentially offensive hashtag #negrospotting to the more politically palatable but far less readable #observinginherentracialdemographicinequalities so as to calm all the fluttered feathers on twitter. 

Tweets for twits.  But other than that, Clay, did you enjoy Clint Eastwood?