Not a single day appears to go by anymore without at least one public figure or another making a complete eejit out of themselves on the micro-blogging phenomenon that is Twitter.
Unlike me or you, who can make simple mistakes and swiftly delete the evidence, when a politician, sports star or celeb slips up online, you can be sure that dozens of the thousand or million-strong followers are re-tweeting or saving screenshots of their blunder for posterity. With that in mind, here’s JOE’s selection of some of the most infamous tweets of Twitter’s young history:
1. Simon Coveney – Whether yesterday’s tweet was a poltical blunder or not remains to be seen, but either way, South Cork Fine Gael TD Coveney’s tweet about the Taoiseach Brian Cowen sounding ‘half way between drunk and holiday’ has had fierce political ramifications. Certain political experts think Coveney’s tweet was politically opportunistic, with Cowen himself stating that the comment was a ‘new political low’ for Ireland. Here is the tweet in full:
“God, what an uninspiring interview by Taoiseach this morning. He sounded half way between drunk and hungover and totally disinterested…”
Senior Fianna Fáil figures are currently tackling the TD to withdraw his previous comments, believing that the worldwide news reports picked up after his tweet have hurt Ireland’s international standing. Coveney however, has steadfastly refused, later tweeting that it ‘seems like offering an honest comment on taoiseachs interview is now being described as a new low in politics.’
2. Dan Boyle – Green Party Senator Boyle blundered in June when he tweeted about the death of colleague Senator Kieran Phelan. The tweet itself, however, was made before the news became public knowledge and before the official announcement of Mr Phelan’s death had even been made. Here is Dan’s offending tweet:
“Sad news Fianna Fáil Senator Kieran Phelan died suddenly this morning. May he rest in peace. The Seanad is being suspended.â€
Dan backtracked on his tweet with an explanation an hour later and continued the grovelling for much of the week. Miriam O’Callaghan did the same before official word on the death of Gerry Ryan had arisen, the silly sausage.
Darren Bent in happier times
3. Darren Bent – Before beginning his hugely successful time at Sunderland FC, Darren Bent was once an unhappy Tottenham Hotspur striker, waiting to be cut loose by manager Harry Redknapp and Spurs chairman Daniel Levy. As he began to believe the club were intentionally stalling his impending transfer in July 2009, Bent took to Twitter on his short-lived ‘DB10thetruth’ account to verbally harass his chairman:
“”Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around, Levy. Sunderland are not the problem in the slightest.”
Bent is now a much happier man on and off the pitch, so we fully recommend following the Sunderland striker here.
4. English Cricket players – Cricket players eh? When they’re not taking bribes they’re inadvetedly ruining Sky Sports News coverage for us all with that silly pastime of theirs. 30-year-old English batsman (not Batman, we checked) Kevin Pietersen kicked things off this month by taking his frustrations to Twitter over being dropped from the English team for the first time in his career after referring to team selector Geoff Miller as a ‘pr*ck’. Not to be outdone, fellow English teammate Dimitri Mascarenhas tweeted a week later:
“Geoff Miller is a knob. No clue what he is doing. Fing pr*ck.”
Four weeks previous, former England Under-19 captain Azeem Rafiq referred to his team coach John Abrahams as a ‘useless w**ker’ and ‘useless c*nt’ in two seperate tweets. And you thought their football team had issues…
5. Sarah Palin – Sarah Palin’s incredible resiliance and popularity amongst the America right, despite her clearly demonstratable lack of expertise in any public forum, is both a puzzling and fascinating sight. The Alaskan ‘hockey mom’ has recently bulked up her social networking visibility with her own Facebook and Twitter pages, though many had wondered whether or not these accounts were heavily vetted or even ghost-wrriten. Evidently not.
Weighting on in the controversial proposed plans to build a mosque and Islamic cultural centre two blocks shy of the site of the World Trade Center, Palin asked muslims to ‘refudiate the Ground Zero mosque plan’ as the pain caused by building such development would be “two raw, two real” in tweets this past July. The former US Vice-Presidential nominee then removed her post, incorrectly using the word ‘refute’ over ‘refudiate’ for her second effort, before deleting the post once more and using the word ‘reject’ instead.
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