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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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