PHOENIX – Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio issued an official statement late Friday afternoon denying allegations by Meghan McCain, daughter of former presidential candidate John McCain, made on her blog earlier this week, claiming that Arpaio is cyber stalking her on Twitter.
McCain published an article on her blog on Monday complaining about “creepy” politicians cyber stalking her on Twitter. Her article starts off with,
Karl Rove follows me on Twitter. That’s creepy….
I am now being followed by Karl Rove, and my local sheriff, and God knows how many other political pundits. We need to take Twitter back from the creepy people.
I hate to break it to McCain, but Karl Rove follows me on Twitter too, and in the scheme of things, I’m nobody. In fact, Rove follows 40,604 people on Twitter. I know he doesn’t notice my Tweets, and I doubt he (or his ghost-Tweeter) pays much more attention to McCain’s.
Crossposted from The Huffington Post
My local Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio (who, as the author of America’s Toughest Sheriff, is notorious in his own right) recently sent me a Tweet about an answer I gave a fellow Twitter follower. He tried to tell me to go easy on them. It’s really scary when the guy who houses his inmates in tents in the summer and whose most visible public-relations success involves pink underwear, boxers, and handcuffs tells you to tone it down.
The sheriff also inexplicably Tweeted me to say my mother owes him $10. Say what?
Again, I hate to break it to McCain, but @Joe_Arpaio isn’t really Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Does Meghan McCain really think a man politically savvy enough to garner more popularity in Arizona than Obama would Twitter the daughter of a former presidential candidate to try to recoup $10?
I’ve been following @Joe_Arpaio for quite some time now, and no one who’s read his feed could mistake him for a real sheriff. First, his name is listed as “Faux Joe Arpaio.” Second, his Twitter feed reads more like a script from the Daily Show. Some recent Tweets include the following:
Radio Chatter: “Fifty bucks to the first guy to try to arrest Britney Spears tonight for indecent exposure.”
Deputy Reprimand: Drivers of K9 Units with female dogs are no longer allowed to announce that they are “riding bitch.”
Radio Chatter: “I’m pretty sure that sniffing cow manure daily is punishment for people who move to the buttcrack of Gilbert.”
Whether I arrest them or they die the end result is less illegals on my streets.
The examples above are all from the last 48 hours and are a good representation of the daily Tweets of @Joe_Arpaio. He also Twittered this message to McCain after she posted her blog article:
I try to extend an olive branch in the form of casual conversation and this is how I’m treated? The acorn never falls far…
The real Sheriff Joe Arpaio says his identity was “hijacked” on Twitter and that he “wouldn’t know a Twitter from a Twix.”
Ironically, while Meghan McCain has no problem reporting false allegations against her local sheriff and Karl Rove for cyber stalking, she complains in the same article that the Huffington Post reported on one of her Tweets”
Who knows the next time The Huffington Post will have a slow news day and feel compelled to stick a headline next to a particularly unflattering photo of me? My Tweets are not sound bytes.
Of course, I recognize I’m choosing to Tweet, but seriously, can’t journalists find something more important and useful to report?
After reading McCain’s blog article, it appears this is a question that McCain, who aspires to be a journalist, should be asking herself.
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