Super Bowl 47 was the most tweeted Super Bowl ever, with more than 24 million tweets. But one of them was fumbled by Idaho Republican Congressman Raul Labrador, who apparently approved of a somewhat racy promo for the CBS show Broke Girls. Labrador tweeted “Me Likey Broke Girls.”
That tweet was deleted after only 14 seconds. His office blames the tweet on a “staff error”. But Labrador, a Mormon and father of five, is just the latest politician to feel the heat for their tweets.
Eric Yaverbaum, Associate Publisher and Co-founder of Social Media Magazines, tells Jansing & Co. “Everything that you do with technology is permanent, permanent fingerprints. You can put it on Twitter and take it off 14 seconds later, it doesn’t matter. Once you put it out there, it’s out there.”
Yaverbaum says the incident serves as a reminder for politicians and corporate executives to make sure they have a policy in place when it comes to Twitter. “Do they actually tweet themselves or do they have somebody hired to do it. Is there a process in place for approval?”
The Sunlight Foundation’s website “Politwoops” makes it almost impossible for politicians to get rid of mistaken tweets. Delaware Senator Ben Cardin’s retweet about carbon taxes being linked to future budget negotiations was deleted immediately. But it’s found a permanent home on Politwoops. “There’s no vacuum cleaner out there to suck that comment back in.” said Yaverbaum.
The most infamous errant tweet occurred in 2011, when New York Congressman Anthony Weiner mistakenly sent x-rated photos of himself over his Twitter feed. The pictures had been intended for one of his female followers on Twitter. Weiner eventually resigned over the scandal.
John Wilson