September 2012
11 posts
5 tags
Kelly Steele (@steelekelly)
Kelly Steele, a campaign staffer to Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., had to eat his Twitter words because he formed them into satire, a dangerous rhetorical art best practiced by those who are not working for politicians. And the worst part is that Steele wasn’t even taking a cheap shot at the rival campaign of his boss.
Steele tweeted a photo of a frowning Rob McKenna, the Republican...
10 tags
Jarvis Britton (@iTweet_Unspok3n)
Death threats and wishes are a sad state of Twitter reality, but it’s a federal crime to aim such rhetoric, whether real or hyperbolic, at the president. Jarvis Britton is the latest to learn that lesson. He was indicted today for threatening to kill President Obama.
Britton, who was denied bond, tweeted his first threat against Obama in June and, despite a warning visit from the Secret...
7 tags
Katie Moody (@katiebrady12)
Until Sunday, Katie Moody was just a senior administrative coordinator at John Hopkins University and a New England Patriots fan living in the wrong city, Baltimore. Now she is the scorn of the Twitterverse because of a crass tweet she posted after the Baltimore Ravens beat the New England Patriots 31-30 on a last-second field goal.
The tweet was aimed at Ravens wide receiver Torrey Smith...
9 tags
TJ Lang (@TJLang70)
TJ Lang’s profanity-laced tweets aimed at replacement referees in the National Football League may be a candidate for “the most retweeted tweet of all time.” But the Green Bay Packers lineman’s outburst over arguably the worst officiating call in NFL history also may cost him dearly.
Lang acknowledged as much in the tweet that, as of last check, had been retweeted 95,120...
9 tags
Gennady Zyuganov (@KPRF_G_Zyuganov)
U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens did not reap what he sowed when he was killed in a terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, but with this entry into the “Twitter Hall of Shame,” Russian Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov is reaping what he sowed on Twitter by lambasting Stevens.
Zyuganov, whose Twitter account is now private, insulted Stevens after he...
5 tags
Kansas City Chiefs (@kcchiefs)
The culprit worthy of shame in this instance isn’t so much the Kansas City Chiefs as it is the person behind the professional football team’s Twitter handle. But the brand took the PR hit because the employee’s identity has not been released.
That employee forgot that the customer is always right — the customers in the sports world being fans — and decided to send...
5 tags
Tanya Heti (@Karleeka)
Picking a Twitter fight that escalates to the point where you tell a celebrity to “go hang yourself” will have consequences — if only short-term public embarrassment.
Tanya Heti learned that when she told Charlotte Dawson, a judge on “Australia’s Next Top Model,” to hang herself. Heti was suspended with pay from her mentoring job at Monash University while the...
7 tags
Donte Jamar Sims (@DestroyLeague_D)
Assassination attempts against the president are no Twitter-joking matter. Make the threats in the city that President Obama will be attending for a political convention— like 21-year-old Donte Jamar Sims did — and you’ll likely end up in jail.
Claiming to be high on marijuana at the time, Sims posted five tweets threatening assassination. He reportedly admitted to the tweets...
12 tags
Jason Biggs (@JasonBiggs)
You can’t be the voice of Leo the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” on children’s television and the poster boy of political filth on Twitter. That’s the message Nickelodeon sent “American Pie” actor Jason Biggs after he posted, and later deleted, a series of vile tweets about the wives of the men on the Republican presidential ticket.
The Twitter curator...
6 tags
Luke Donald (@LukeDonald)
Golfer Luke Donald fell into Twitter’s “Weiner trap” (named after disgraced Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.) — he accidentally posted a public tweet that he meant to send privately as a “direct message.” In Donald’s case, the tweet criticized the design of a golf course that had just gotten the better of him.
“Gil Hanse is a [expletive]. Haha,”...
7 tags
Will Hill (@trill_sg)
Sharing the sexually explicit, and sometimes illegal, details of your “happy football life” on Twitter will hurt your chances of making that life a profession. University of Florida safety Will Hill learned that when National Football League teams thought twice about drafting him after seeing his tweets.
“Negatives: Raised concerns about some poor off-the-field choices via his...
8 tags
Krista Ford (@kristaford)
Clueless men regularly make foolish statements about women who have been raped, but women usually know better. Krista Ford, the daughter of Toronto, Canada, Mayor Rob Ford and a former lingerie football player, is the exception. She suggested in a tweet that women who “don’t dress like a whore” are less likely to become rape victims.
Her tweet, posted after a series of sexual...
August 2012
8 posts
8 tags
Samuel Cook III (@SamuelCookIII)
Mocking a man’s religion is a usually a no-no in politics these days, but that didn’t stop a man with ties to President Obama’s campaign from tweeting bigoted wisecracks about the Mormon faith of Mitt Romney, Obama’s Republican rival. Samuel Cook III targeted Romney on Twitter after the candidate posted a tribute to astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died last week.
Cook...
6 tags
Dave Catanese (@davecatanese)
“Bad idea trying to have nuanced conversation on highly charged issue on [Twitter],” Politico reporter Dave Catanese tweeted Monday. “Did not intend to take a side. Lesson learned.” It’s too bad he didn’t learn the lesson from former colleague Joseph Williams, who lost his job over opinionated tweets two months ago.
Catanese made himself a target for Twitter...
7 tags
Rio Ferdinand (@rioferdy5)
Fines for foolish tweets are no longer just an American sports tradition. Our former colonial rulers across the pond are playing the game, too.
The English Football Association this week slapped soccer player Rio Ferdinand with a $71,000 penalty for retweeting a racist phrase about rival player Ashley Cole. That fine came weeks after the European Tour fined English golfer James Morrison for...
6 tags
Alexa Dell (@alexakdell)
Daddy dearest Michael Dell, who will spend nearly $3 million this year on security for his family, apparently didn’t care much for some of daughter Alexa Dell’s informative tweets. Word has it that the billionaire computer executive had his daughter’s Twitter account killed for security reasons.
What exactly was Alexa Dell tweeting that caused so much concern? For starters,...
9 tags
Anonymous Celebrity (@obamasmistress)
Only Twitter and the New York Police Department know the “Anonymous Celebrity” who tweeted under the pseudonym @obamasmistress, but apparently the tweeter wasn’t as threatening in person as he or she pretended to be online.
The NYPD went to court to force Twitter to release information about the anonymous Twitter user after a threat to commit mass murder in a New York theater....
9 tags
Marisha Agana (@MarishaAgana)
If you are running for political office, or ever hope to do so, commit Godwin’s Law to memory and purge all thoughts of Adolf Hitler from your rhetoric. If you don’t, you’ll open yourself to contempt and mockery like congressional candidate Marisha Agana, R-Ohio, did by comparing President Obama to Hitler in a tweet.
Agana said Obama is like Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao...
8 tags
Heidi Anne Wys (@Heidiwys)
When you earn six figures working for a top government official, it’s wise to keep your Twitter tongue in check. Heidi Anne Wys didn’t, so now people are demanding that the adviser to Puerto Rican House President Jennifer Gonzalez be fired.
Responding to a birthday picture that President Obama posted of his wife, Wys tweeted: “Who cares? Take her to Burger King, buy her a...
July 2012
5 posts
8 tags
Tyler Hunter (@TH1_King)
Tyler Hunter has left his mark on Florida State University football — but probably not the one he wanted. The controversy over his tweets against the police, including one that advocated the killing of police officers, prompted FSU coach Jimbo Fisher to ban his players from Twitter this football season.
A sophomore defensive back, Hunter impulsively turned to Twitter to air his gripes...
10 tags
Voula Papachristou (@papaxristoutj)
What Yahoo News said: “When you’re in the spotlight as much as Olympic athletes are, it pays to keep your personal opinions — and tasteless sense of humor — to yourself.”
Greek triple-jumper Voula Papachristou violated that common-sense rule when she published this tweet (translated into English from Greek): “With so many Africans in Greece, at least the West...
4 tags
Kathlyn Ehl (@KathlynEhl)
Kathlyn Ehl’s brief stint as a policy assistant to the gubernatorial campaign of Rob McKenna, R-Wash., serves as a warning that Twitter has a long memory and that nasty tweets can come back to haunt you.
Late last year and early this year, before she worked for McKenna, Ehl penned two Twitter gems that mocked Asians and the elderly. She joined the campaign in April, and two months later a...
6 tags
Louis Peitzman (@LouisPeitzman)
Louis Peitzman earned his spot in the Twitter Hall of Shame not for a tweet of his own but for a story about someone else’s hacked tweet. The Gawker writer falsely accused entertainment reporter Sam Rubin (@samontv) of posting a racist tweet about rapper Young Berg (@TheRealYoungBerg).
“I don’t expect to get a basket of flowers from Gawker,” Rubin wrote on his KTLA.com...
6 tags
Malcolm Harris (@destructuremal, @getsworse)
Twitter is fighting to protect the tweets of an Occupy Wall Street protester in trouble with the law, but a judge ruled that the company must give prosecutors more than three months of tweets that Malcolm Harris wrote using the @destructuremal handle. (The account now belongs to another Twitter user.)
“The Constitution gives you the right to post, but as numerous people have learned,...
June 2012
9 posts
7 tags
Cher (@Cher)
Cher is vying for the dishonor of being the celebrity to publish the most bigoted tweets in history.
In May she reluctantly apologized for a series of nasty tweets about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and “his right-wing, racist, homophobic, women-hating, teabagger masters.” But the apology sounded insincere when, only days later, she blasted Romney for attracting...
4 tags
Patrick Gaspard (@patrickgaspard)
The Supreme Court’s decision to uphold President Obama’s healthcare law inspired the Democratic National Committee’s executive director to write a supremely stupid and vulgar tweet: “It’s constitutional. B******,” Patrick Gaspard bragged moments after the ruling was announced today.
Republicans blasted Gaspard for the tweet, and he quickly backtracked a bit,...
8 tags
Amar'e Stoudemire (@Amareisreal)
Sometimes knowing the difference between a direct message and a public reply isn’t enough to keep a celebrity from getting into trouble on Twitter. Amar’e Stoudemire of the New York Knicks knew better than to openly tweet an anti-gay slur at a fan. But he failed to consider that the target of his slur could make the tweet public.
That’s exactly what Brian Ferrelli did after...
7 tags
Zoe Strauss (@zoestrauss)
Gay rights activist Zoe Strauss tarnished her cause at the first White House reception for gay pride when she posed in front of a portrait of former President Ronald Reagan with both of her middle fingers raised. She posted the photo to her Twitter account along with the tagline “F*** YOU, REAGAN!”
Strauss later removed the photo from both Twitter and her Facebook. She also made her...
6 tags
Joseph Williams (@jdub321)
Politico suspended White House correspondent Joseph Williams over tweets and television comments that took aim at Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann. The conservative website Breitbart.com characterized Williams’ tweets as “outrageous race- and class-baiting.”
Politico editors John Harris and Jim VandeHei announced the suspension in an email to...
5 tags
James Morrison (@jimbogolf1)
European golfer James Morrison joins the growing ranks of professional athletes to be disciplined for misbehavior on Twitter. The European Tour fined him for angry tweets about the state of the Celtic Manor golf course during the Wales Open.
Morrison apologized for the tweets, and the tour warned players to expect penalties for social media use that is “offensive, threatening,...
8 tags
Valerie Trierweiler (@valtrier)
Twitter, Twitter, online wall, who’s the cattiest first lady of all? The dishonor clearly goes to France’s Valerie Trierweiler for the cheap Twitter shot she took at her husband’s former partner.
Trierweiler’s tweet, dubbed “the first gaffe of France” by a major newspaper in the country, is written like a note of encouragement on the surface. “Have...
8 tags
Sonja Abrahamsson (@Sweden)
It’s rare that a 27-year-old mother of two gains the social media status to tarnish the reputation of an entire nation, but Sonja Abrahamsson managed it when she spoke as the voice of Sweden in her stint as a guest tweeter for the country.
Abrahamsson tweeted a series of tweets about Jews and homosexuals that others said were bigoted. One example from the woman whose blog nickname is...
6 tags
Gwyneth Paltrow (@GwynethPaltrow)
Rule No. 1 in public (or private) discourse: Don’t use the n-word to describe blacks — ever. Rule No. 2: Don’t dare think that Twitter humor exempts you from Rule No. 1.
Actress Gwyneth Paltrow did. Or maybe it was her friend Terius Nash, the black singer-songwriter known as The Dream. Whoever typed the tongue-in-cheek tweet “Ni**as in paris for real” from...
May 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Phil Bailey (@PhilBaileySC)
Phil Bailey, political director of the South Carolina Senate Democratic Caucus, inflamed religious and political passions in one of the most conservative states when he called Republican Gov. Nikki Haley the “Sikh Jesus.” Bailey’s own party demanded that he delete his Twitter account, which he promptly did. The GOP wants him fired.
“Everybody is in agreement that what he...
5 tags
Gene Morphis (@theoldcfo)
“The old CFO” needs a new media strategist. That’s the takeaway from the firing of Gene Morphis, the former chief financial officer of the clothing and accessories chain Francesca’s Holdings. He was fired for tweeting details about the company under the Twitter handle @theoldcfo.
From The Wall Street Journal: “The company said it launched an internal investigation...
5 tags
Ekaterina Solovyeva (@4katrin)
When will the Twitterverse learn that tragedy is no joking matter? Make light of death and destruction and you’ll likely face the same professional fate as Russian Ekaterina Solovyeva, who lost her job as an Aeroflot stewardess over a tweet about a plane crash.
“Huh? Did a Superjet crash?” she tweeted. “Hahaha! This aircraft sucks, it’s a pity it wasn’t in...
11 tags
Ryan Smith, Owen Parisi, Jesse Glidden, Steven...
Gloucester High School punished these five students, including four athletes, for directing racist tweets at professional hockey player Joel Ward, who is black. Along with many other Twitter users, the student posted the tweets after Ward scored the winning goal for the Washington Capitals in a playoff game against the Boston Bruins.
The school did not release the names of the students, and The...
April 2012
3 posts
5 tags
John Barnes (@Jbindy4)
Panther Racing owner John Barnes let his Twitter mouth run faster than the race cars his company owns, and it will cost him $25,000. IndyCar hit Barnes with a fine for that amount for tweeting “improper or disparaging language” about the organization. He’s also on probation for the rest of the year.
The tweet that landed Barnes in trouble read, “Today is the day to...
6 tags
Chris Perez (@ChrisPerez54)
The penalty is a pittance compared with the Twitter fines imposed by the National Basketball Association, but Major League Baseball still sent a message to Cleveland Indians Pitcher Chris Perez about proper online decorum by fining him $750.
Perez’s transgression: “a reckless disregard for the safety of the players on both clubs.” After a game against the Kansas City Royals...
8 tags
Austin Carroll (@austincarr0ll)
Tweeting profanity is not what the doctor ordered to treat teenage insomnia. Austin Carroll, a 17-year-old senior at Garrett High School near Fort Wayne, Ind., tried it and his attempt at late-night vulgar humor earned him expulsion.
Carroll’s punishment made him an online celebrity as critics of the school rushed to defend his right to free speech, even if, as the school alleges, he used...
March 2012
7 posts
7 tags
Marcus Higgins, Spike Lee (@maccapone, @SpikeLee)
By his own admission, Marcus Higgins was “mad at the situation” surrounding the shooting death of Trayvon Martin when he posted what he thought was the address and phone number of the man who shot Martin. Higgins tweeted the information more than 100 times on March 23, and film director Spike Lee retweeted it.
But Higgins (and Lee and others who retweeted him) should have counted to...
4 tags
Luis Pagan (@SoFlo_Diver)
You have the right to remain silent on Twitter. Anything you say about pornography and your supervisors can and will be used against you. If you do not understand these rights, you will lose your job as a law enforcer, just like Luis Pagan.
The Fort Lauderdale, Fla., police officer was caught tweeting with porn stars and criticizing his bosses on the social network. Even worse, he committed his...
5 tags
Mike Stone (@madmike42948)
Minnesota teenager Mike Stone might argue that he should be inducted into the Twitter Hall of Fame for the Twitter publicity stunt that made him briefly famous. But inviting a porn star to a high school prom is shameful juvenile behavior, so Stone will be memorialized here instead.
Thankfully, the adults in charge of Tartan High School had the good sense to realize that a room full of...
6 tags
Rusty Braxton (@smackema1)
By his own father’s account, 23-year-old Florida resident Rusty Braxton is like other “typical” kids who “talk before they put their brains in gear.” But Braxton’s brainless Twitter chatter about Occupy Wall Street protesters needing to “kill a cop or 2” made him the target of a police investigation.
Braxton insisted that his tweet was...
8 tags
Khulood Badawi (@KhuloodBadawi)
The Twitter war between Israel and Palestine turned figuratively bloody when Khulood Badawi, the Jerusalem-based national officer for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, posted a false photographic account of a Palestinian child allegedly killed by Israel.
“Palestine is bleeding,” she tweeted. “Another child killed by Israel. Another father carrying a...
6 tags
J.R. Smith (@TheRealJRSmith)
Nudity, Twitter and the National Basketball Association don’t mix well. That’s the message to J.R. Smith of the New York Knicks, who has been fined $25,000 for tweeting the photo of a woman’s bare backside.
“I didn’t know it was going to be as big a deal as it is now,” Smith said after word of the ruling. “I definitely regret it. Anytime I do anything...
7 tags
Tony Grossi (@TonyGrossi)
One accidental tweet undermined the reputation that sports writer Tony Grossi had built during two decades of covering the Cleveland Browns. The Plain Dealer moved Grossi off the beat after he called Browns owner Randy Lerner “a pathetic figure, the most irrelevant billionaire in the world.”
Grossi objected to the newspaper’s decision to reassign him. “We’re given...
December 2011
11 posts
8 tags
Cassandra Wright (@cassienwright)
One Twitter controversy for college Republicans at the University of Texas apparently wasn’t enough, so their new president gave them another one.
Cassandra Wright, who replaced Lauren Pierce (@laurenepierce) after she joked about assassinating President Obama, posted a tweet that critics called racist. The text of the tweet: “My president’s black, he snorts a lot of crack. Holla....
7 tags
Freddie Gibbs (@FreddieGibbs)
Rapper Freddie Gibbs may have rapped one too many times on Twitter after he carried marijuana onto an airplane. Gibbs, who has openly admitted that he smokes the illegal drug, bragged about getting away with a crime and tweeted photographic proof.
Now both he and the government security official who returned the pot with a warning note may be in trouble over the incident. “Should the...
7 tags
Rep. Steve King (@SteveKingIA)
Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, incurred the infamous wrath of Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (@JacksonLeeTX18) today when he tweeted this during a House hearing: “We are debating the Stop Online Piracy Act and Shiela Jackson has so bored me that I’m killing time by surfing the Internet.”
The tweet disrupted the hearing after Jackson Lee, D-Texas, registered an official objection to...
