Ashton Kutcher keeps Twitter open, hands control over to management team
Ashton Kutcher has relaunched his Twitter.com account and handed over control of his profile to his management team after sparking outrage by defending ousted college football coach Joe Paterno.
The actor shut down the account after commenting on the sacking of the Pennsylvania State University football team head coach without knowledge of the growing sex abuse scandal which led to the decision.
The 84-year-old coach came under fire for failing to take action
against assistant Jerry Sandusky, who has been charged with
molesting young boys over a 15-year period. It has been alleged
that Paterno knew of the scandal.
Upon learning Paterno had been sacked on Wednesday (09Nov11),
Kutcher took to his Twitter.com page to question the board of
trustees' decision, writing, "How do you fire Jo Pa? insult. no
class. as a hawkeye (University of Iowa) fan I find it in poor
taste."
His ill-advised tweet prompted a flurry of angry messages from
offended followers, with several criticising Kutcher for his
response in light of the fact he co-founded a charity to end child
sex slavery.
The actor quickly deleted the post and closed his page, admitting
he felt "awful" about his comment, adding, "As an advocate in the
fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more
remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case."
Kutcher has since addressed the matter in a lengthy post on his
blog, explaining, "I walked by the television and simply saw a
headline that Joe Paterno had been fired. Having no more
information than that, I assumed that he had been fired due to poor
performance as an aging coach... I assumed that the university had
let him go due to football related issues.
"With that assumption... I posted a tweet defending his career. I
then when about my evening... and about an hour later turned on
ESPN where I got the full story. I quickly went back on my twitter
account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an 'idiot'...
I quickly retracted and deleted my previous post; however, that
didn't seem enough to satisfy people’s outrage at my
misinformed post. I am truly sorry."
But Kutcher has decided not to quit Twitter.com altogether and has
instead put his assistants in charge of his tweets in a bid to
control the messages which he posts online for his eight million
followers to read.
He writes, "Up until today I have posted virtually everyone of my
tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become to big to be
managed by a single individual... While I will continue to express
myself through (Twitter account) @Aplusk I'm going to turn the
management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst Media to ensure
the quality of it's (sic) content."