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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   28290 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 28, 2023

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Joe Biden apparently has been using at least three pseudonyms in email communications that mixed family & government business. A legal nonprofit group filed a FOIA request more than a year ago and the National Archives said it found potentially 5,400 emails but has yet to release them.

The closest scenario I can think of was Mitt Romney using the name "Pierre Delecto" in order to maintain a lurker Twitter account, which seems whatever. Trump is also quite fond of pseudonyms. Is there any possible innocent explanation for why Biden would use a pseudonym when discussing government business? I can't think of one. Obama defended the practice when members of his administration got caught doing it but it seems very unconvincing with the existence of email filtering:

The Obama administration defended using alternate government email addresses as necessary for high-level political appointees since the flood of emails to their public inboxes made those accounts unreasonable to manage.

At a 2013 press conference, then-White House press secretary Jay Carney assured reporters that "this is a practice consistent with prior administrations of both parties, and, as the story itself made clear, any FOIA request or congressional inquiry includes a search in all of the email accounts used by any political appointee."

My favorite politician pseudonym is “Carlos Danger,” to the extent that I can recall it faster than “Anthony Weiner” (which already sounds like a pseudonym in itself). It’s so cheesy yet awesome and memorable; I love it.

My favorite pseudonym was Mike Vick’s “Ron Mexico” for checking in a hospital for if I recall an STD.

I’ll throw in “Joey Freshwater,” Ole Miss HC Lane Kiffin’s coed-chasing alter ego.

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