It’s #nickcleggsfault
Or, rather, it’s Nick Barlow‘s fault. I rocked up on Twitter this morning expecting another tedious re-run of last week’s pre-election hype…
» chickyog: Morning all. has Nick Robinson exploded yet?
» nickjbarlow: @chickyog No, but when he does, the Telegraph and Mail will claim it’s Nick Clegg’s fault.
» chickyog: @nickjbarlow Ha. I feel a meme coming on.
» chickyog: Just stubbed my toe #nickcleggsfault
Two hours later, the #nickcleggsfault hashtag was the top of Twitter’s worldwide trends – higher even than Earth Day (Earth Day, for pity’s sake – I’m so sorry) which is taking place today – as people looked to blame the monster in our midst for everything wrong with the country today.
After the right-wing press’s monstering of Nick Clegg this morning, it turned out to be the right hashtag at the right time. At the time of writing the hashtag has been twittered 23,500 times.
It being an otherwise slow news day, some journalists felt the need to run with it – Five Live, the Guardian, Metro, BBC, and the Telegraph who blamed it on some kind of small-’l’ liberal plot. (You can’t really complain though if it diverted Toby Young from his mission to drag standards down to the level of his own mewling mediocrity.)
You can see the full madness here and here. The Clegg article that prompted the Daily Mail’s ‘CLEGG IN NAZI SLUR ON BRITAIN’ assassination attempt is here at the Guardian. It’s a very good, very well written and very heartfelt piece. After reading it, my hand hovers above the Lib Dem box on my ballot paper. Without the Daily Mail going embarrassingly apeshit today I would never haver seen it. I could vote for someone like that. Who’s fault is that?
Posted on April 22nd, 2010 at 2:51pm under Culture, media and sport, Liberal Democrats
Tomorrow morning, the Daily Mail headline will be about Nick Clegg cancelling Earth Day. And probably eating an orang utan.
Now that made me laugh Tim, but don’t forget that Clegg also keeps his children in a hut.
Good work, fellas.
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