Gov. Rick Perry’s Twitter Enemy List

I'm a follower of @GovernorPerry, Governor Rick Perry's personal Twitter account along with about 37,000 other people. Recently it's come to light that Perry has been blocking some journalist and columnist from viewing his tweets. Luckily, I'm not one of them but I do think the act is pretty silly and I wonder why the Governor has decided to do it.

Everyone in politics has people who don't like them. Those who are against the Governor would probably use any piece of personal information against him and if he was posting really personal things on Twitter, I would understand why he wouldn't want certain people knowing that information. However, he doesn't post personal things on Twitter. He is smarter than that. His tweets comment on football, the weather, coffee, and of course politics. Nothing that could really damage him.

During the local elections, a Democratic candidate blocked me from viewing their Twitter and Facebook updates. I thought it was silly and lost even more respect for that person. In an age where we are asking for more transparency from our elected officials, blocking the public seems wrong. Not only wrong, but kind of silly and 8th grade like actions is what I think when I hear or see a politician banning someone on one of these social media sites.

Of course there are ways around being blocked, which we took advantage of during the local elections and I'm sure the people who have been blocked by the Governor have done the same thing. It's not a big deal, just petty. Shouldn't the Governor have better things to do than block journalists he doesn't like from Twitter? I believe he does and I hope that he moves on from this practice.