Friday, August 31, 2012

Clint Eastwood's RNC Speech Spawns 'Invisible Obama' Tweets

Clint Eastwood's RNC Speech Spawns 'Invisible Obama' Tweets cc: 

The director, who addressed an empty chair, has also inspired a web meme called "Eastwooding."

Shortly after Clint Eastwood's odd, rambling 10-minute speech at the Republican National Convention, where he addressed an empty chair with the conceit that President Barack Obama was actually sitting in it, an "Invisible Obama" account surfaced on Twitter, firing off such one-liners as: "Did I just get invisible credit for taking out Bin Laden?"
Hours later, @InvisibleObama has gained nearly 37,000 followers on the micro-blogging site -- far from the real Obama's 19 million but still impressive for a just-hatched social-media gimmick. The account's bio reads: "Stage left of Clint Eastwood."



STORY: Clint Eastwood's Bizarre RNC Speech: Hollywood Reacts
Among the most retweeted tweets:
--"Someone should tell Marco Rubio he's standing on my foot right now"
--"When Mitt Romney says 'Mr. Chairman,' do you think he's referring to me?"
--"Let me paraphrase you, Mitt: Global warming?! Ha! How could you believe in something that you can't even see? #7kindsofirony"
No word on the internet prankster's identity.
"Everyone's asking, 'who's behind @invisibleobama?' That seems like a silly question, doesn't it?," Invisible Obama tweeted, adding the hashtag #thinkabouthatone.
Meanwhile, Eastwood's anti-Obama address featuring the empty chair not only left Roger Ebertheartbroken (see: the critic's tweet of despair), it also inspired a web meme dubbed "Eastwooding," where users uploaded photos of empty chairs on Twitter in a collective and instant display of mockery.
Even Obama got in on the action.
Early Friday morning, a tweet from the president's official account responded with a photo showing the Comander in Chief sitting in a presidential chair and the line: "This seat's taken."