EARLIER THIS YEAR, as you may remember, country music singer Zach Bryan had a few too many alcoholic beverages before pulling out his phone and opening “X,” the app formerly known as Twitter. “Eagles > Chiefs,” he tweeted tipsily. “Kanye > Taylor. Who’s with me?” It’s not clear exactly what Bryan intended — most likely he was joke-trolling the Taylor Swift fan community, which, as he realized the next morning when he awakened with a penitent headache and looked at his phone, is about as good an idea as sneaking up behind a sleeping grizzly bear for the old “popping a paper bag” prank. A few days of red-faced apologies later, Bryan deleted his Twitter account, explaining that he’d decided it was too tempting for him, especially after a few beers. “It gets me in trouble too much,” he wrote, on an Instagram post. “Don’t drink and tweet! Don’t drink and tweet!” This seems to have done the trick; the kerfuffle faded quickly away. Probably that’s because Bryan’s last line rang like a bell. Nearly everyone who has a social media account and is not an absolute teetotaler has had the experience of waking up the next morning after a friend’s birthday party and discovering that he has embarrassed himself with a late-night Facebook post that seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but ... The first drunk tweet in Oregon history didn’t end nearly so benignly. Maybe it would have, if Twitter had been a thing in March of 1838 when, fortified with a nice zesty jolt of French brandy, the Rev. Herbert Beaver took quill pen in hand and sat down to compose it; but, then again, maybe not. Now, I have to confess that I have no hard evidence that Beaver was drunk when he belted out his handwritten “tweet.” But, one of the unintended consequences of the tweet, much later, would be the publishing of Beaver’s household liquor consumption, which was absolutely heroic. I figure a fellow who burns through the alcoholic equivalent of 17 “fifths” of Jack Daniels every month probably can be assumed to be no stranger to the whole “Dutch courage” thing, when sitting down to write an angry letter.... (Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory; 1830s) (For text and pictures, see https://offbeatoregon.com/2411d.herbert-beavers-drunk-tweets-677.509.html)
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Feb 23 202510 mins