It’s no surprise that Dick Cheney’s Twitter pulse sped up last night:
Starting with a couple of tweets in the 6 o’clock hour, the volume exploded as news of his heart transplant hit the internet.
The top 3 (re-) tweets, with over 1800 messages, were jokes about his transplant. I don’t care to reproduce them here, so you’ll have to search on Dick Cheney to see them yourself. Number 4 (483 retweets) points out the irony of Cheney (presumably — for all I know, he paid cash) receiving government paid-for health care. The fifth most popular retweet (435 times) I will quote, however — it is much milder and wittier than the top 3:
RT @michaelianblack: I guess Dick Cheney finally had a change of heart.
Using a sentiment analysis (which is fairly simplistic, to be clear), we can see that there’s a consistent level of negativity in the tweets. Dick is not popular amongst many in the twitter crowd…
So I guess Twitter doesn’t heart Dick Cheney … (sorry, couldn’t resist).
I, however, wish Dick Cheney a speedy recovery and return to good health.