Astronaut Twitter-Apologizes for the Crime of ... Quoting Winston Churchill

Source – One of the unwritten rules of social media is avoid inspirational quotes.

American astronaut Scott Kelly put that to the test on Sunday when his use of Winston Churchill quotes landed him in hot water with people who oppose the wartime British prime minister’s views on empire and race. …

Kelly, whose sister-in-law is former Democrat Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, used a famous remark by Churchill to comment on deep divisions in American politics.

Kelly’s Twitter followers also linked Churchill to a famine in Bengal, India, that killed at least three million people in 1943.

Kelly quickly apologised for the offence caused.

Way to step in it, Scott Kelly. You might be a big deal in low Earth orbit, but that doesn’t mean you can hack it in the harsh, zero gravity, freezing cold vacuum of the Twittersphere. This is an atmosphere that is in hospitable for the kinds of human life that want to express high-minded ideas by quoting the giants of history. Something this rookie learned the hard way.

So yeah, you can have balls enough to strap yourself into a seat on the top level of a 150-foot, nitrogen-cooled, highly-volatile, propellant-filled, highly explosive metal dick built by government contractors and hurl yourself into the dark void of space for your country. But throw out one quote by a historical figure and be prepared to feel the wrath of the keyboard warriors who sit around all day in the comfort of their gaming chairs just waiting for a mistake like this. Their dojo, their rules.

And guess what? Churchill was a racist. He hated the brown people. He was the Prime Minister overseeing the most expansive empire in human history. An empire of which it was said the sun never set upon it. And for sure he said and believed some of the people under his rule were inferior. That happened. Fact. He also held Great Britain together when they – and their subjects – were hanging on by their fingernails. When the Brits were all alone because the U.S. wasn’t interested in getting off the bench. When they were spilling their own blood to keep western democracy from getting swallowed up by the kind of totalitarian nightmare that would have sent the people pedantically lecturing astronauts off for sadistic medical experiments without so much as a Twitter apology.

Ask anyone whose ever served in the armed forces with the Brits and they’ll tell you that are the biggest collection of badasses that have ever gone into battle. Ask any Brit and they’ll tell you that only Churchill’s leadership kept their hopes alive. Hell, just see the Gary Oldman movie. It’s all there on the screen. And like virtually every other great figure from history, he did and said horrible shit to people who didn’t deserve it. Moses kept slaves. Caesar wiped out Gallic tribes. Bobby Kennedy openly hated Jews and gays. Hell, the British royal family tried to starve my ancestors out of existence too, and damned near succeeded. That’s the human race for you.

So if you’re going to try to inspire people with quotes, be prepared to answer for every sin the quotee ever committed, thanks to the Internet cowboys. Even if that quote is, ironically enough, about the country coming together. And even if you’re ballsy enough to shoot yourself on a gigantic firework beyond the surly bonds of Earth or if your sister-in-law got shot in the head just for being in Congress, it doesn’t mean you have the guts to fight in the Twitter arena. That’s why I stick to quotes from Will Ferrell comedies and The Office. Lesson learned.