Presidential material? (via @TheRealRoseanne)

Presidential material? (via @TheRealRoseanne)

Sometimes, Twitter hands you a decent story. And sometimes it’s a circus. This is more the latter, but it piqued our interest. Last night, Sam Jewler, a mainstay of Occupy D.C., was getting into a 140-character spat with Gabriel Brey, a high-school student in Falls Church, Va. who really loves all things Republican. A fuller blow-by-blow is below in a Storify module, but the short version of events goes something like this:

Jewler’s girlfriend and fellow occupier, Sara Shaw, was sending a message about an upcoming expansion of the Occupy D.C. library, which survived the massive clearing out of McPherson Square earlier this month. Brey, who frequently engages Jewler in Twitter fights chimed in, tweeting, “When will we be having our book burning and black tape event?”

Well, who should step into the fight but the comedienne-turned-macadamia farmer Roseanne Barr. Yes, the real deal, verified account and all, laying into a Fairfax County teenager who tags half his tweets with “#Santorum2012.” Collectively, Barr, Shaw, Jewler and Brey, along with various tag-team partners on all sides, tussled over Marx and Lenin and the merits of critical thinking.

But why do we care that a kid in Northern Virginia is bickering with a pair of Occupy D.C. demonstrators? Chalk it up to Barr, who 15 years after she stumped the hell out of the fans of her eponymous sitcom with the “it was all a writer’s diary” ending, is getting off her Hawaiian nut farm and seeking the Green Party’s nomination for president. (Alongside other fringe candidates, no less.) Seriously, she’s filed paperwork with the Federal Election Committee, and among her campaign promises are to send investment bankers earning more than $100 million to “re-education camps” or face the guillotine. Seriously. Her campaign slogan? “Vote for me, I’ll fix this shit!” Seriously.

Appropriate for someone who tested the campaign waters last year with a visit to Occupy Wall Street, where one of the more famous signs held by a protester read, “Shit is fucked up and bullshit.”

And she’s even making headway in legit presidential polls. Public Policy Polling, a North Carolina-based firm, threw Barr into the mix in its most recent survey. She nabbed 6 percent of respondents—a single-digit finish like every other third-party, but in a hypothetical matchup between her, President Obama and Mitt Romney, Barr pulled votes only from the president and the undecided.

Granted, Barr’s disapproval rating of 63 percent is far higher than anyone else running for the Oval Office. Personally, I blame that on that muddy sitcom dénouement more than, say, her famously brutish rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at a Chicago CubsSan Diego Padres game in 1990. (OK, fine it probably is the anthem.)

But by the end of last night’s Twitter debate with a smattering of local activists, Barr won at least one voter in Shaw:

Read more of this epic battle of wits:

Filed Under: green party, macadamia nuts, occupy d.c., roseanne barr, twitter fights,