Following a rush of criticism, actor Ashton Kutcher deleted a controversial Tweet on Wednesday night, when he protested the firing of Joe Paterno, and admitted he had not known about the sex-abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State.
“How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” Kutcher wrote to his 8 million Twitter followers.
His followers responded with an explosion of insults, many of them extremely vicious, blasting the actor for defending the 84-year-old coach, who is under fire for possibly covering up former defensive coordinator Jerry Sandusky’s alleged sex abuse of young boys.
Kutcher, 33, soon realised his mistake,? quickly backpedaled and admitted his ignorance. “Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet!” he wrote. “Didn’t have full story.”
He later deleted that message, too, and added another: “As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case.”
He also made this pledge: “As of immediately, I will stop tweeting until I find a way to properly manage this feed. I feel awful about this error. Won’t happen again.”
This is the second Twitter faux pas in recent months for Kutcher. On September 11, he backtracked after calling it “the greatest day of the year,” because it was the start of the football season.
Paterno had earlier announced that he would retire at the end of the football season but was fired before then. Also fired was Pennsylvania State president Graham Spanier.