Should Barack Obama, the first digital president, have to give up Twitter?

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

Should Barack Obama, the first digital president, have to give up
Twitter?

With all the justifiable excitement about America's first black
president, it's easy to forget that Barack Obama is also the nation's
first digital president. Or at least he could be if his aides don't
take away his BlackBerry and his Twitter account.

According to the New York Times, Obama, who like most of the people
who are reading this post, has been communicating regularly via cell
phone, IM and email for years, may be forced to give these up because
of fears that his digital communications could be hacked, subpoenaed,
or reprinted in the National Enquirer.

Many of us, like the president-elect, are firmly planted in the
digital world. Like those bitter working-class Pennsylvanians who
cling to their guns and their religion, we hold on to our keyboards
with a steely grip, and we're not giving them up any time soon to go
back to pencils and pens. Barack Obama shouldn't have to sacrifice his
choice of writing technologies just to be president. It's not fair,
and it's not even necessary.

...

find out how Barack can keep his BlackBerry. Read the rest of this
post on the Web of Language


Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

http://illinois.edu/goto/debaron

read the Web of Language:
http://illinois.edu/goto/weboflanguage

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