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Jon Stewart rockets @ladybigmac to stardom

The Daily Show host makes one Twitter user more popular than she'd ever imagined.

 

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Internet Culture

Posted on Jul 29, 2011   Updated on Jun 3, 2021, 3:45 am CDT

Ruth Mclnerny calls herself @ladybigmac on Twitter after her husband’s CB radio handle, not after the famous McDonald’s sandwich. Sorry, Jon.

On Wednesday’s “Daily Show,” Jon Stewart poked fun at Mclnerny, a former bookkeeper from Alabama, and the fact that her tweets have been regularly featured on CNN. According to Stewart, owning a Twitter account doesn’t make someone a political whiz.

“Is it so wrong that we want pundits vetted?” Stewart said on his program. “I want to get my news from news people. Not random people with an AOL account.”

As the old adage goes, any press is good press and for Mclnerny, this was very true.

The segment and Twitter mention from the @thedailyshow helped increase her number of followers from 26 to 2,223 in less than a day.

#JonStewart – have any idea what you started?” tweeted Mclnerny, a self proclaimed news junkie who often responds to CNN correspondents on Twitter.”I now have over 2,000 new friends! That’s more people than live in my town! What fun I’ve had.”

Even CNN correspondents like Christine Romans showed Mclnerny, who has not responded to an interview request, some love.

“OMG do you know how famous you are?!” tweeted Romans.

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*First Published: Jul 29, 2011, 1:38 pm CDT