Thank you, Hunter Biden, for showing us how to save our politics |
Hunter Biden, a man made more famous by the unhinged obsessions of the man currently in the Oval Office than he ever was as the son of a former president, decided it was time to join the world of Twitter once again. Just as my vacuum cleaner is forever destined to be called the Hoover, I have given up calling the thing X – as, it appears, have countless others, as the ripples of the reactions to his first tweet revealed.
A previous lurker, it took just over 13 years from the creation of his account to his first musings – and what a joy it has been to watch the reach and impact of them since.
I would in fact go as far as to say that the world of Twitter, at least from my tiny corner of it, has upped its game over the past few weeks and is back to being close to the melting pot of banality, razor-sharp commentary and analysis, debate (remember when that was a thing), schadenfreude – mercifully – and downright crack-pottery that has kept me entertained and informed for well over a decade now.
The platform’s determination to send all manner of horrors my way is still there, as are the terrible AI-driven engagement-farming adverts and prats with tiny microphones thinking they’re one street “interview” away from a Pulitzer. But for all that, the signs of a return to some of the old glory days are there.
What has been most remarkable about the activity of Biden since embracing Twitter is that his manner of doing so serves as an exceptional lesson to us all. He has what might generously be described as a chequered past with drug and alcohol addiction at its core, and predictably his opponents – but as he points out, they are really opponents to his father’s politics – have thrown all manner of insults his........