New Zealand journalist investigates validity of Amanda Palmer's weird Inauguration Day tweet
Musician and artist Amanda Palmer celebrated Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ inauguration with a tweet read ‘round the world. “Just walked into a coffeeshop here in Aotearoa, New Zealand,” it says, “and everybody behind the counter, not really knowing me but knowing I was American, erupted in spontaneous applause.”
In its view of the world as a sequence of unlikely but dramatically-pleasing moments and sense of blinkered self-importance, this is a kind of platonic example of a Palmer (and certain brand of American) tweet. Likely because of how effortlessly irritating the message is, and a follow-up claim that “Kiwis feel an intense affection for Americans,” it soon became the focus of intense scrutiny by New Zealanders—so much so that Hayden Donnell from The Spinoff decided to investigate Palmer’s story for himself.
The article says that Palmer’s tweet “didn’t mesh with the Aotearoa New Zealand many of us thought we knew, where any achievement, from getting an ‘A’ on an assignment to winning the Rugby World Cup, is met with a grim nod and a stern reminder not to get too full of yourself.” Still, Donnell is a journalist and understands that anecdotal evidence only takes you so far. The rigorous investigation he then embarked upon led him to uncover the likely coffee shop Palmer would have visited—Hawthorne Coffee Roastery And Espresso Bar—and to contact manager Chris Coleman.