Thank You For Your Service

In a moment of crisis, a hero emerges: You.

Now that the public part of the Comey hearing has ended I want to offer an acknowledgement of all the time you spent tweeting about it. Please do not mistake my brevity for a lack of appreciation — far from it! It is more an affirmation that I understand how busy you are with all your other responsibilities, and what a sacrifice it must have been for you to tear yourself away from them, knowing that you would have to make up all the lost time later.

In any event, I hope you will allow me to be the first to offer my undying thanks for all the work you did just now. I cannot overstate how valuable it was that we had you there to provide commentary on social media during this moment of national significance. Your voice in particular rose above the din to add unique and irreplaceable value to a subject about which many of us would have been confused or even clueless without the impressive guidance you brought to bear.

I know you are the modest type, and you’ll be embarrassed by all this praise, but before you brush it off with self-deprecating asides about just being part of the conversation I want to say, no, that’s not what happened, and we all know it: You, sitting there tweeting even though you knew thousands of other people were doing and saying the same things — frequently faster and often with more precision and wit — were the hero that America needed at moment where it never needed a hero more.

Now I know you’re anxious to get back to everything you put off so you could come to us in our hour of desperation, but please do so knowing that our gratitude goes with you and will never die. This country owes you a debt it can never fully repay, but will try to a little bit each day from here on out. Take a bow. You’ve earned it.