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Thursday, June 10, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
OPINION
I
n the age of digital media, emojis
have
become
commonplace
as supplements for standard
text, and their use has exploded
since their conception. Whether
coinciding with or replacing texting
lingo such as LOL, the visual aspect
that sets emojis apart from script is
part of their popularity. Emojis allow
for emotion and other cues used
during face-to-face interaction to be
imbued into text-based conversation.
With the focus on pictures in emojis,
there have been claims they are the
modern incarnation of Egyptian
hieroglyphics. A current exhibit
in the Israel Museum entitled
“Emoglyphs” attempts to display
a link between hieroglyphics and
emojis. However, emojis are not
exact recreations of hieroglyphics
for the modern world. “Emoglyphs”
is an example of how some
people are connecting the two
communication
systems,
but
emojis and Egyptian hieroglyphics
may not have the straightforward
connection that the exhibit and
others argue to exist. Taking
cultural variation in emoji usage
into
account,
the
relationship
between the ancient and modern
pictographic
systems
becomes
murky.
Egyptian hieroglyphics emerged
approximately 5,000 years ago
and became the dominant written
language in ancient Egypt. More
than 700 hieroglyphs were in
usage, some representing sounds
and other purely grammatical
functions. These symbols were
inscribed on temple walls and used
as decoration for objects utilized
in daily life. But hieroglyphics did
not forever stand alone as the only
writing system used by the ancient
Egyptians. Other scripts — Demotic,
Coptic and Ancient Greek — were
common near the end of ancient
Egyptian civilization. The last
known hieroglyphic inscription is
dated to the 5th century C.E. when
the writing system fell out of use.
The thousands of years of Egyptian
writing are not a story of just
hieroglyphs but a myriad of scripts
that
facilitated
communication
throughout the civilization.
The history of emojis is not
measured in millennia but in
decades. Emerging from Japan, the
first emojis were put into use during
the late 1990s and they became
immensely popular among the
Japanese. This led to an increased
interest
from
international
communication
companies
in
incorporating emojis into their
platform. By 2010, Unicode — a
group whose purpose is to establish
text standardization across digital
platforms — adopted and expanded
emojis. Ever since then, emoji use
has increased with new users, and
new emojis are born on the regular.
What
the
Israel
Museum’s
“Emoglyphs”
exhibition
is
attempting is a definitive linkage
between these two histories. The
exhibit is described as presenting
“the metamorphosis of picture-
writing” from ancient Egypt to today
— from hieroglyphics to emojis. The
walls of the exhibit include side-
by-sides of emojis and Egyptian
hieroglyphics that resemble one
another. The stress on the similarity
is in terms of the visual aspects of
the characters.
O
n May 21, Anthony Bouchard,
a Wyoming state senator and
candidate for Wyoming’s
2022 at-large U.S. House seat election,
announced — in an alleged attempt to
get ahead of opposition researchers —
that when he was 18, he impregnated
a 14-year-old girl. He went on to
compare the incident to Romeo and
Juliet. This rightly led to widespread
condemnation, including from his
fellow Wyoming Senate Republicans,
and will hopefully end any chance
he has of making it to Congress. His
campaign was notable in the first
place primarily because of who it
aimed to unseat — incumbent U.S.
Rep. and recently removed House
Republican Conference Chair Liz
Cheney. Bouchard, like an ever-
growing list of candidates for her seat,
has taken aim at Cheney for her vote
to impeach former President Donald
Trump in January for his alleged
incitement of the storming of the
U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, as well as her
condemnation of false Republican
claims of election fraud. Those actions
also, as mentioned previously, led to
House Republicans removing Cheney
from her post as conference chair on
May 12 and has made her a target of
Trump’s, who has described her as “a
bitter, horrible human being.”
Conversely,
Cheney
has
only
become
more
popular
among
Democrats, 51% of whom view her
either somewhat or very favorably, as
opposed to only 20% of Republicans.
Many prominent Democrats have
spoken in her defense, as well.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi,
D-Calif., stated that “reasonable
Republicans across the country must
take back their party” in response to
her removal. Senate Majority Leader
Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., described her
ouster as a “new and very dangerous
low point” for the GOP. President Joe
Biden responded to the vote by saying
that he doesn’t “understand the
Republicans,” as well as exchanging
a fist-bump with Cheney prior to his
address to Congress.
While the statements from top
Democrats are likely a political play
to exploit any remaining anti-Trump
sentiment for electoral ends — which is
probably pointless, given Cheney’s low
favorability among non-Democrats
— the fact that she enjoys such strong
support among Democratic voters
is deeply concerning. While Cheney
was undoubtedly correct in her
condemnation of Trump and his false
claims of election fraud — in contrast
to most of the rest of her party — she
has otherwise been a poisonous
political figure who has stood against
all values that progressive-minded
people should hold dear. Democrats
should not rehabilitate her solely for
standing against a few of the worst
excesses of Trumpism. Rather, they
should celebrate that such a consistent
evil-doer has been removed from a
position of influence.
While Cheney has only been in the
House for a little over four years, she
has consistently been on the wrong
side of issues. She was a virulent
opponent of the Iran nuclear deal and
a staunch supporter of Trump’s policy
of re-applying devastating sanctions
on the country. She opposed ending
U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s
brutal invasion of Yemen, which she
described as “intended to help our
allies defend against threats to their
security.” However, the worst among
her offenses was her sponsorship
in 2020 of an amendment to the
National Defense Authorization Act
that prevented the withdrawal of
U.S. troops from Afghanistan unless
a number of conditions were met.
Chief among those conditions was
assessing if any “state actors have
provided any incentives to the Taliban,
their affiliates, or other foreign
terrorist organizations for attacks
against United States, coalition, or
Afghan security forces,” an obvious
allusion to the now-largely debunked
Russian bounty story. Time and time
again, she has stood for increased
U.S. aggression around the world,
sometimes even beyond what the
president from her own party wanted
— not to mention her strong opposition
to abortion rights or her aversion to
addressing climate change.
Emojis aren’t hieroglyphs
version 2.0
Liz Cheney is getting kicked out by the Republican
Party. You shouldn’t be crying for her.
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