Hey, at least it's more prestigious than the Geminis

Over the past year, Twitter has been adopted as the tool of choice for cutting-edge Members of Parliament to connect with their constituents about political positions, breaking Parliamentary news and the inside scoop on Government issues.

Failing that, Twitter’s used for 140-character partisan snipes and announcing what MPs had for breakfast.

According to the fantastic site Politwitter, 97 Members of Parliament are currently on Twitter – not exactly a majority, but gaining steam. The site also crunches every variety of useless statistic about politicians on Twitter that can be crunched, including a Social Media Score for every Canadian pol. Make sure to cite the troves of information at Politwitter when you churn out some half-assed essay at 2 A.M. about how “Social Media Is The Future Of Communication”, first-year communications studies majors! However, they also track how often MPs tweet – their annoyingness factor, in other terms – and there’s one politician whose chubby little head and shoulders are above the rest, earning our first award:

THE TWEETY FOR BEST ABUSE OF TWITTER

Sample Tweet: "Je pensais être victime d'un virus massif sur ITune: j'écoutais Hotel California et la toune suivante était:I know you want me de Calle Ocho".

There’s a site called Follow Cost which determines how often a person posts on Twitter, and therefore determines how much it will “cost” you to follow them. One MP, with a current score of 56 tweets per day among his last 100 tweets, has a follow cost that’s so off-the-charts that it prompts the website to dramatically flash the words “Nuclear Follow Cost” and show a mushroom cloud. Ladies and gentlemen, your Tweety for Abuse of Twitter goes to DENIS CODERRE, Liberal – Bourassa!

Denis Coderre will tweet about literally anything on Earth. He live-tweets every Habs game, probably contributing more hockey analysis alone to the internet than some TSN anchors. He once tweeted 22 times over the course of one Montreal/Tampa Bay game, including one to tell us he was eating chicken wings. He tells jokes. He compared John Baird to “yogurt past its expiry date”, which must be really insulting in French. He replies to pretty much anyone who @’s him in a Tweet, sometimes with just a two-character emoticon, often smiling, occasionally winking. His background image is a caricature of himself on the Quebecois cartoon “Et Dieu créa… Laflaque.” Today, he posted about how he thought he had an iTunes virus because he was listening to Hotel California when it switched to Calle Ocho, but then he realized he’d accidentally uploaded his kid’s iPod songs.

Basically, following Denis Coderre on Twitter is like having a cool uncle who gets drunk and tells a lot of long stories. We’re not sure whether that makes him the best or worst MP on Twitter, but he definitely gets the inaugural Tweety for Abuse of Twitter.

THE TWEETY FOR GROSS IMAGERY

Carolyn Bennett’s a pretty decent Tweeter. She’s pretty lighthearted, and talks a lot about stuff like the Olympics and the Oscars (which she’d apparently wagered on, and had picked Avatar for Best Picture. Fool!) But then one day, she dropped this bombshell:

Just sent an email to VIa Rail-the washroom on the train coming home from Windsor reeked of urine-often on the train to Ottawa too..not good

That’s pretty gross, Carolyn.

Without Twitter, we wouldn’t live in a world where we have to imagine Carolyn Bennett popping a squat to hover over a urine-soaked steel toilet on some piss-scented hell-train bouncing along to Windsor. This is all Twitter’s fault.

Congratulations on your Tweety!

THE TWEETY FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT IN SLANDER

Oh Dean Del Mastro, you just can't catch a break.

We already wrote about Liberal backbencher Michelle Simson, and that time she called Dean Del Fatstro a fattie. We just remembered it now, though, so we decided Michelle Simson should be an obvious recipient for our inaugural Lifetime Achievement in Slander Tweety.

This groundbreaking moment in Twitter history showed how social networking and new media opportunities have revolutionized the way that elected officials can call each other lardasses.

If I had to pick 3 defining moments in the history of Canadian political insults, it would be the following: John A. MacDonald drunkenly vomiting during a debate and claiming it was because the idea of his opponent made him ill, Pierre Trudeau telling opponents to fuddle-duddle off, and Michelle Simson tapping her thumbs 140 times or less on her Blackberry to call a political opponent a fatass and having that message instantly spread to every politician and news organization on Earth.

Congratulations on your Tweety, Michelle!

THE TWEETY FOR SUCKING AT THE INTERNET

Sukh Dhaliwal seems like an alright guy, but boy, he could use some Internet safety training. He somehow managed to get himself a Twitter virus (practice safe Twittering, kids, if you Twitter without protection you might catch a virus) which spammed all of his followers, including Your MapleRag. Sending direct-message virus links to all of your acquaintances ain’t exactly the way to present yourself as a politician with gravitas. Don’t campaign teams all have some pimply 18-year-old to handle this “internet stuff” for them?

More alarmingly, MapleRag’s imaginary girlfriend, Niki Ashton (NDP, representing the riding of Our Hearts) has ALSO allegedly caught a virus, based on a tweet she posted advising people not to click on suspicious direct messages she might have sent. However, she doesn’t win jack at the Tweeties because Your MapleRag didn’t get the virus from her, which proves she doesn’t love us. I CAN CHANGE, BABY!

Congratulations on your Tweety, Sukh!

THAT DOES IT for round one of the inaugural Tweety awards, come back later when we’ll probably do more of this crap! Also you can follow MapleRag on Twitter, and we’ll give you the Tweety for All-Around Swell Person!