I have no aspirations to run for political office, but should my ambitions change I have already formulated a list of promises I will make to the American public when it comes to social media usage.
I promise to hire a professional proofreader to review my tweets before I hit “send.” This, in contrast to President Trump, whose past Twitter rants have included head-scratching words like “covfefe” and enough grammatical errors to send a high school English teacher scurrying to Costco for an industrial-sized box of red markers.
I promise to apologize for, rather than embrace, any videos featuring my dance moves. In other words, I will not take the approach of freshman Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. After a video surfaced of her busting some moves while a student at Boston University, “AOC,” as she is known to her legion of social media followers, repeated some of those moves in a video tweet recorded outside her new congressional office digs. She added a slam aimed at Republicans, some of whom criticized her hip-hop prowess.
“I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous. Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too!” she tweeted.
Then again, Ocasio-Cortez does know how to dance. I cannot make that claim. Also, I am certain there exists video somewhere of me, at an early 1980s fraternity party, poorly imitating all the Peanuts characters dancing to “Linus and Lucy,” the classic Vince Guaraldi song from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Should that video surface, all I can say is that I was full of Christmas cheer that evening. And alcohol-infused egg nog.
Finally, I promise never to bring a camera into my medical or dental appointments, no matter the objective. Rising political star Beto O’Rourke obviously disagrees with that strategy.
O’Rourke, a Democrat whose teeth look as if he visits a dentist daily as opposed to annually, nearly accomplished the impossible last November, falling just short in his bid to unseat Ted Cruz for a senate seat in the Republican stronghold of Texas. Despite his loss, O’Rourke’s political star now shines brighter than his enamel, with many urging him to run for president in 2020. O’Rourke hasn’t revealed his plans; I only hope he rinses and spits before doing so.
“So, I’m here at the dentist…” O’Rourke began, making the most obvious political statement since Lloyd Bentsen told Dan Quayle, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” I mean, Instagram viewers were watching O’Rourke drool while saliva spewed from his mouth and gloved hands held a teeth cleaning tool inches from his molars. Where did they think he was? The opera?
O’Rourke then turned the camera on the hands’ owner, his dental hygienist Diana. O’Rourke queried Diana about her childhood spent growing up along Texas’ southern border, an area Trump says is full of hardened criminals attempting to illegally cross from Mexico into the United States. A $5 billion wall, Trump argues, would solve that problem.
Diana disagreed, calling her community “a wonderful place to live and grow.”
O’Rourke and Ocasio-Cortez are known for letting their social media followers view the most personal details of their lives. While O’Rourke shares videos of him folding his own underwear in a laundromat, Ocasio-Cortez lets her masses see that, yes, she changes her shoes on subway platforms just like millions of working women.
That’s all fine, but there’s a reason medical and dental facilities contain privacy curtains and individual examination rooms. If we were comfortable with everyone seeing us at our most intimate and vulnerable, yearly prostate exams would be offered in Central Park. O’Rourke would probably be first in line, filming the procedure on his iPhone in panorama mode.
So, politicians, as we gear up for what promises to be a no-holds-barred race to the presidency in 2020, please remember your message won’t be more powerful if you’re slobbering, sweating or amped up on medication while delivering it.
Unless that medication contains truth serum. Then I’ll be watching.
