Aides to prominent political figures should NOT allow them to use Twitter. Absolutely not. If I worked on Capital Hill, I would not allow my boss to tweet.
Oh, but thank the Lord that they do. Some politicos have really stepped in it with Twitter. For example, after an embarassing Tweet sent during the State of the Union address, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) blamed his “foot-in-mouth” moment on an aide:
Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas) had the choicest Twitter moment. “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour,” he Twittered.
Or was it him? Shortly afterwards, another message appeared on his account: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.” Both those messages are missing from his Twitter page, apparently deleted, but they were reported by PC World and several other news sites.
More recently, Newt Gingrich famously called Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor a racist.
This week, GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra (MI) joined the ranks of the “I really wish I hadn’t tweeted that” when he compared life in the House minority to the uprising in Iran.
Glenn Thrush at Politico has reported that somebody decided to have a little fun with Rep. Hoekstra and set up a website based on the theme of Hoekstra’s over-the-top comparison of life in Congress to life under an intolerant, repressive, and authoritarian regime. Here is an image from the website. It is worth a visit.
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