WASHINGTON (Disassociated Press)- Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan said he was “stunned” today by the announcement that Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau would surrender himself and all his followers to authorities after he realized he’d started a trending hashtag on Twitter that even First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted.
Shekau, a purveyor of workplace violence and kidnapper of little girls, was quoted as saying, “With progressives in Hollywood and Washington aligned against us, what choice did we have? Look, when Bradley Cooper and Michelle Obama tweet about you in a negative way it has an impact. Sure, you gain followers, but so many of them are negative. I can’t even look at my mentions column anymore. Twitter trolls are the worst. I missed an invite to a party and a picture of Miley Cyrus twerking because so many people were tweeting mean things to me. I’m done.”
Boko Haram, which translates to “western education is sinful,” was so named because “We are monsters who should have our heads ventilated by a .50 caliber bullet” was too long to fit on business cards and douchebags.net was unavailable. The group has yet to ask forgiveness for past transgressions, including the tens of thousands of people it has slaughtered, because, as Shekau told reporters, those people have not trended on Twitter.
“Forget the huge body count we’ve racked up,” Shekau said. “No one batted an eye when we shot and burned to death 59 boys in a boarding school back in February. Did that even make the nightly news? But the hashtag #BringBackOurGirls, how do you combat that? We’re radical Islamists wiling to die, but even we have feelings.”
The media credited Michelle Obama’s “pouty face” twitpic with being the straw that broke the camel’s back. A terrorist who asked to remain anonymous because he was recently followed by a Kardashian and doesn’t want to risk being unfollowed said, “She (Michelle) looks so sad in that picture, so you know the White House is serious. She doesn’t affix her initials to just any tweet, only ones she’s totally for serious about.”
The tweet was signed “- mo,” indicating the First Lady approved of it herself, according to White House staff.
This victory for hashtag diplomacy comes on the heels of another major hashtag victory for the Obama administration in the conflict in Ukraine. On April 24, State Department Spokesman Jen Psaki tweeted “The world stands #UnitedforUkraine. Let’s hope the #Kremlin & @mfa_russia will live by the promise of hashtag,” and, as the world now knows, Russia immediately retreated and apologized.
The Obama administration’s foreign policy successes through Twitter are expected to usher in a new era of U.S. influence around the world. When reached for comment, thousands upon thousands of victims of Saddam Hussein’s rape rooms said, “What’s Twitter? And while what’s happening to these girls is tragic, why do Democrats feel called to action in this case but didn’t seem bothered by our plight and treat our liberation from the Hussein hell as some sort of waste of time? Do we not count?”
Syrian civilians refused to comment on this new tactic, saying they were too busy digging graves under a “big red line” that appeared from nowhere, then did nothing, to bury tens of thousands of people murdered by chemical weapons.
No one in Darfur returned our calls for comment by press time.
When reached for comment, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said everything already was known about Benghazi and there was no need to ask any questions. When we clarified that we weren’t asking about Benghazi, she responded, “This is a partisan witch-hunt.” When we reiterated that we were asking about the kidnapped Nigerian girls, she responded “Republicans want to make sure those girls don’t receive equal pay for equal work,” at which point we gave up.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blamed the Koch brothers and said “this incident will only exacerbate ‘climate disruption’ if we don’t raise taxes now.” We tried to explain the question to him again, but he just mumbled “Koch brothers” several more times while trying repeatedly to open a janitor’s closet claiming he heard there was a cowboy poetry slam in there.
White House Spokesmodel Jay Carney told reporters President Obama would consider tweeting about this and other foreign policy issues himself when he finished golfing, but Carney couldn’t specify when, or if, that might be.
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