Opinion: Why Chuck Grassley should probly knot use the Twitter

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No one wants their representative looking like a twit while surfing through the interweb tubes.

But while it’s commendable for gray-haired senators to embrace new technologies to communicate with their constituents, some people are really doing more harm than good. Today’s example comes from the conservative Republican senator from Iowa, Chuck Grassley, who was obviously instructed that it’s OK to abbreviate words in his tweets.

While it’s true that the 140-character limit of Twitter is contradictory to the long-winded behavior of many representatives, when you’re talking about schools and education, maybe you should consider a different approach than abbrevatin’ like a newbie trying to be kewl.

This is the same Sen. Grassley who in June tweeted at the president, claiming that Obama ‘had nerve’ to encourage Congress from Paris to get serious about the healthcare bill.

While new media barbs might be interesting to one’s followers (virtual and otherwise), today’s tweet was either a clunker of a joke, or an unfortunate attempt to squeeze 160 characters of thought into 140 letters.

Grassley has explained previously why he has used Twitter and why he doesn’t plan on abandoning the free tool. “I’ve tried to use every latest technology to keep in touch with constituents. Representative government is a two-way street,” the senator told the Iowa Independent this summer. “I’m one half of that, my constituent’s the other.”

May I suggest that either the senator creates a blog where he can be as verbose as he pleases (and then uses Twitter to provide a URL link to his masterworks), or use programs such as Twitzer, Twitlonger or Twerbose.

-- Tony Pierce

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