Failed presidential candidate Scott Walker, who it may surprise you to learn is still the governor of Wisconsin, blighted Twitter with a photo of his hand Tuesday afternoon. It seems he intended to remind everyone that an entire U.S. state is still within his grasp, and that the hand you see upon your screen is poised to magick some bills into laws.
Instead, he did something much worse. He inspired a ton of people on Twitter to post mocking photos of their own hands.
Photo of my hand before signing 58 bills into law today: pic.twitter.com/crM19dwjNi
— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) March 1, 2016
Does Walker deserve mockery and disdain for this very weird tweet? Probably. Does that mean anyone should have to look at even more photos of hands? God, no. Thumbs, especially those with dirty nails, are some of the grossest things that regularly appear uncensored on the Internet.
“Your thumb is almost certainly objectively unattractive and likely says more about you than you would like—namely, that you don’t pay as much attention to your body as you should,” wrote Gawker’s Jordan Sargent in the definitive essay on the subject.
And yet, and yet:
https://twitter.com/morninggloria/status/704773004195192832
photo of my hand before sending 58 tweets today pic.twitter.com/OYoapQGXae
— jack (@jackhaveitall) March 1, 2016
https://twitter.com/OldHossRadbourn/status/704778949948280833
Photo of my hand as I read people’s tweets about their hands pic.twitter.com/PaJNzI3kc4
— Jessie Opoien (@jessieopie) March 1, 2016
Photo of my hand that I’m going to include in a @BuzzFeed post about this whole stupid photo of my hand thing. pic.twitter.com/gfgbuOGVCM
— David Mack (@davidmackau) March 1, 2016
https://twitter.com/cat_beltane/status/704783151256752128
Photo of my hand trying to stop his Twitter trend pic.twitter.com/H8zawHdCbT
— Olivia Nuzzi (@Olivianuzzi) March 1, 2016
This might be Governor Walker’s most important—and worst—contribution to a Republican race that was already bizarrely fixated on hands. The late, great Spy magazine tagged Donald J. Trump decades ago as “the short-fingered vulgarian.” His opponent, Marco Rubio, made the same dig over the weekend, telling an audience in Virginia, “He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2.”
Trump retorted that “people say I have the most beautiful hands.”
Is Walker’s tweet a subtle allusion to this strange GOP hand-measuring contest? A subtweeted expression of regret that he dropped out of the race? Is he implying that, although he’s of shorter stature than Trump and Rubio, his manly digits would have made him more electable? Probably not. Sometimes a thumb is just a thumb.
At least this good, old @dril tweet got a second life out of the deal:
Update 1:30pm CT, March 1: Though all his hand skin fell off as he performed his bureaucratic duties today, Walker remains a long-fingered parliamentarian.
What my hand feels like after signing 58 bills into law today: pic.twitter.com/NcAE5Ng9oR
— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) March 1, 2016
Photo via Gov. Walker/Twitter
