Republican apologizes for Twitter slur

After first failing to acknowledge that he had done anything wrong, the Republican candidate for a vacant senate seat in Minnesota finally apologized for tweets that were widely seen as distasteful. Conservative candidate Mike Perry called US President Barack Obama a “power-hungry, arrogant black man” on Twitter. After initial hesitation, Perry apologized for his tweet, which he claimed was written in “haste” and out of frustration with what he believes is Obama’s left-wing, free-spending approach to governing the country. But an added piece of mystery surrounding Perry’s Twitter activities was the fact that his most controversial tweets almost always disappeared from his page after being posted. Perry now notes that his staffers may have removed up to 33 tweets, but that he still takes responsibility for this content.

Brian Melendez, Perry’s opponent on the left, accepted the candidate’s apology for his comments on Obama, but noted that many of the 33 or so older tweets also contained inexcusable remarks. In fact, Melendez asserts that in one of these Twitter posts, Perry tried to draw an indirect connection between Democrats and pedophiles.

What politicians continually fail to realize is just how rapidly news and comments spread through Twitter and other social networking sites. Twitter profiles and tweets are not open exclusively to one’s followers, but they are also indexed by Google and made available to all internet users, journalists and rival politicians on a profile page where all tweets posted by an account holder are displayed. While Perry is hoping to fill a Republican senate seat, only time will tell what impact this Twitter error in judgement will have on his electoral chances at the end of the month.