Beloved Children's Troubadour Raffi Is Losing It At Journalists on Twitter
Everyone's childhood is currently going up in flames, as Raffi, the iconic Canadian ancestor of the modern-day Wiggle, is sort of losing it on Twitter.
A couple days ago, the Vancouver Aquarium reported that Kavna, a popular beluga whale under its care had died suddenly. It had become sick over the weekend, and died suddenly at age 46. Raffi, who had had a brief fling with Kavna in the experimental 1970s, tweeted his sadness to followers:
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@vancouveraqua just heard the news, sad she's gone. loved meeting her in '79 ~ gave me a kiss, inspired a song now known to millions!— Raffi Cavoukian (@Raffi_RC) August 7, 2012
But here's the thing: for a wordsmith who built his career on exploiting the subtle differences beween oaples and banonos, eeples and baneenees, and ayples and banaynays, Raffi's phrasing wasn't great.
Most people who read the tweet assumed the singer-songwriter was identifying Kavna as the subject of his most popular tune, 1979's Baby Beluga.
Raffi later clarified that Kavna merely inspired him to dream up a totally different, imaginary whale and write a song about her.
But news outlets had already begun running with the first, slightly more interesting version of the story.
This prompted Raffi to start losing it. He immediately started personally tweeting at some of the journalists who propagated the vicious lies. Like, The Huffington Post:
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@alliecomp@huffpostgreen you're wrong! Kavna was the inspiration for my song about an imaginary whale... please delete this tweet.— Raffi Cavoukian (@Raffi_RC) August 8, 2012
He even engaged in series of heated back-and–forths with some of the articles' writers.
Next up, Raffi started seeking out random Twitter users who had merely linked to stories with the false, inflammatory, ridicudonkulous headlines, or even just tweeted variations of the statement "Baby Beluga is dead! :(" :
Apparently realizing this was an inefficient means of information dissemination, Raffi switched tactics again, imploring the sheeple to police themselves on his personal Twitter page:
all tweeting 'babybelugaisdead' headline-wrong!! song's about an imaginary whale. pls a) delete tweet, b) comment on their facebook page.
— Raffi Cavoukian (@Raffi_RC) August 8, 2012
Finally, he just wrote out the equivalent of a big, conspicuous sigh to let everyone know he was disappointed in them.
upsetting 2 see articles & tweeps re death of babybeluga. the song is about an imaginary little whale.
#belugagrads pls RT— Raffi Cavoukian (@Raffi_RC) August 8, 2012
And that's where we are now. As of this writing, Raffi is still Twitter-scrapping with journalists who falsely report that "Baby Beluga" herself is dead.
In other news: The whale who wrote Baby Beluga died Monday.
