Twitter, Michael Dunn, and Overconfident Law School Students

I think Michael Dunn looks a little like Jimmy Osmond.

This afternoon, after I had made myself as presentable as I would ever be, but while Alyssa was still slaving away at her beauty routine, I amused myself by visiting Twitter.  The Michael Dunn case was a topic of discussion, and an African-American self-proclaimed law student was taking Judge Alex to task for having suggested that evidence was unclear as to whether race had been a motivating factor in Michael Dunn's decision to shoot into the car in which Jordan Davis was a passenger.

I will not name the Tweeter, as I would prefer that he not show up here.

Basing my presumptions on the context,  I surmised that  Judge Alex must have suggested that the evidence didn't clearly evince racial  motivation in the crime.  I never found that particular post of Judge Alex's.  I did find, however, a post  in which Judge Alex responded to the tweeter  in question that one should not make generalizations -- that his [Judge Alex's] own children listen to hip-hop music and his [Judge Alex's] own son has tattoos and wears ripped clothing.  I concurred with the judge's statement, as the same things could be said of my brother. I opined that taste in music has less to do with ethnicity than with age.

The tweeter was not pleased with me.

He tweeted the following:

@TheAngelAlexis @judgealexferrer This will teach you since your OWN have elaborated on it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SpF3cwJ86A …

He linked a video of which I watched only a snippet. The part I saw featured members of the Klan. I asked him what made him think the people in the video were my own.

He responded:

You're the person tht will say I have BLK friends or When I see u I dont see color well do u see as a male @TheAngelAlexis @judgealexferrer

I responded that he had mischaracterized me. I acknowledged the continued existence of racism, but maintained that taste in music tends to be more deeply rooted in age than in ethnicity.

He then tweeted:

@TheAngelAlexis Well understand this involved race. If it was another color of males they [presumably sic -- I'm not exactly sure what was his point, but he probably meant wouldn't be] would be gunned down in the way they were.

My friend Jaci showed up during the exchange. She inquired about his name/handle. He refers in said handle to his belief that his finances will soon change for the better. His actual name, if it really is his name, is three unrelated syllables culled from God knows where. He took slight umbrage at her questioning of his name/handle. Meanwhile, he was also carrying on flirtatious excahnges with a couple of women.

Then he again responded to me:

@TheAngelAlexis I see you don't get it white males don't go through what BLK males go through. We judge off skin your ppl judge off choice.

By this time I had departed, but he continued:

But would you shoot BLKs, he did not whites but a truck full of thugs. Smh@welshjaci @TheAngelAlexis @judgealexferrer

In a response specifically directed at Judge Alex, he stated that thug is synonymous with the n word.  I do not agree, but it's not really a matter of opinion. I think available sources back me up on this one. 

I love situations like this because they afford me the opportunity to project my own issues onto others and to make conclusions  which I don't necessarily have adequate background information to make.  I know that I don't really know this man, yet I can act as though I do.

In my mind,  Mr. Someone Who Expects to Win the Lottery is the first person in his immediate circle of  family and  friends to have completed an undergraduate degree program.  He has an extremely high opinion of his own articulateness, intelligence, and education.  He is, in his own mind, quite possibly the first person ever to have attended law school. The fact that Judge Alex not only attended law school, but completed it, was a successful litigator, and served as a judge is of little to no importance to him. After all, Judge Alex probably attended law school back in the days when anyone with funds to pay tuition was admitted, and passing grades were handed out to anyone who had nice teeth.  The fact that I've been admitted to medical school [which I did not mention] is probably attributable primarily to society's continued inequity (and, for that matter, to society's iniquity as well).

His supposed law school of enrollment is affiliated with the university of the state of which Lansing is the capital. (I really don't want to make googling my blog easy for him.)  I'm going way out on a limb here, but unless he knows something about state bar exams that I don't know,  I fear he's throwing his money away on law school. While I understand that twitter is a highly informal social medium and that one need not utilize the Queen's English in all or any Twitter interactions and postings, his English usage is substandard far beyond anything that could be excused as typographical errors. 

God knows I'm a pitiful typist and have no room to criticize anyone else for the prevalence of typographical errors in Internet postings. Most of us can tell the difference, however, between a typo and  a systemic error in English usage.  His repeated use of should of in place of should have, his frequent invocation of double negatives, his lack of subject/verb agreement, his use of your where you're was implied, and even nit-picky errors such as synonymous to as opposed to synonymous with are all indicative of a lack of familiarity and ease with standard English.

It's not beyond possibility that the man is bi-dialectical and that in the rapid exchange of carrying on multiple Twitter conversations, he confused the dialects of his respective audiences. Such is not beyond possibility, but neither is it all that likely. It's more probable that his command of the English language is not nearly so impressive as he believes it to be.

All social media users would do well to keep in mind that anyone can say he or she is anything in a social medium such as Twitter.  The man may never have seen the inside of a law school. The man, for that matter, may not even be a man.  Still, if the man (if he really is a man) made some fairly bold and sweeping  assumptions about me.  It is my choice to reciprocate and to have fun in doing so.