Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart dedicated a significant chunk of airtime to the ugly situation in Nigeria — where Boko Haram terrorists have abducted 200+ schoolgirls — and the local government’s slow reaction to the atrocity. That eventual reaction, of course, was clearly jumpstarted when a local hashtag (#BringBackOurDaughters) gained traction around the world.
Say what you want about the merits of Twitter activism — yes, hashtags don’t put food in the mouths of starving children — but in this case, social media did take an issue of dire importance that was languishing in obscurity and force it onto the worldwide stage. Governments across the globe now have troops supporting the ongoing search.
You know who isn’t impressed by that? Rush Limbaugh, who ripped the efforts of the #BringBackOurDaughters/#BringBackOurGirls campaign, even calling a (much parodied) photo of Michelle Obama holding a sign “pathetic.”
Stewart, of course, reacted with a devastating takedown, calling Rush a “quivering rage heap who is apparently desperately trying to extinguish any remaining molecule of humanity that might still reside in the Chernobyl-esque superfund cleanup site that was his soul” before starting a hashtag of his own: #F*@KYOURUSH.
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