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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Tweeting is tempting, but don't be a twit

Posted: 03/19/2012 1:00 AM | Comments: 0

Singer Jann Arden and Liberal politician Justin Trudeau brought wrath upon themselves by running off at the mouth on Twitter. Both were forced to issue an apology after there was blowback on social media. (POSTMEDIA NEWS ARCHIVES)

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(POSTMEDIA NEWS ARCHIVES)

OTTAWA -- You'd think by now most people in the public eye would have figured out they can't just shoot off at the mouth like most of us plebeians.

President George H.W. Bush learned the hard way when he said he didn't like broccoli and banned it from the White House in 1989. California broccoli farmers got cheesed off and sent truckloads of the vegetable to the president in protest.

If you're an ordinary citizen, you don't have to like broccoli and you can freely admit it without anyone, save perhaps your mother, telling you otherwise. When you're the president of the United States, you have to keep your likes and dislikes to yourself for fear of alienating voters.

If you're a federal MP with the name Justin Trudeau, you can't vent about your BlackBerry without drawing some flack.

Last week, Trudeau had what many people experience -- a frustrating experience with technology. On March 12, he took to Twitter: "OK, now I officially hate this BlackBerry. Stupid ineffective touch screen mislaunching tweets. Plus I can't multitask, apparently."

Who hasn't cursed at a computer that just crashed, or ranted about pocket-dialling your boss while you're ranting about work.

But Trudeau isn't just an ordinary tweeter. He has nearly 120,000 followers, second only to Prime Minister Stephen Harper among Twitter users on Parliament Hill.

Trudeau's venting was retweeted 35 times and the next day it even got the attention of the PR woman at RIM itself, who offered via Twitter to help him. Six hours later, Trudeau tweeted to Amy, "Thanks for your help, turns out I was just a bit shaky yesterday. I love @BlackBerry again now."

But it didn't end there. Other tweeters criticized him for blasting a Canadian firm. Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth even criticized Trudeau in the House of Commons about it.

There was enough blowback Trudeau felt the need to clarify his statement, tweeting on March 13: "OK, to be clear, I do not hate BlackBerry, or RIM. I just get frustrated at the touchscreen on my 9900. But the rest of the phone is great."

Perhaps he can commiserate with singer Jann Arden, who had to do some Twitter two-stepping of her own last week after a dispute with Via Rail landed her and her dog on a platform "in the middle of nowhere."

"Via Rail you guys suck... a four-pound dog in a bag and you boot me off in the middle of nowhere?" Arden complained on Twitter.

But Arden was in the wrong because Via has a policy against allowing pets to travel. She also wasn't exactly in the middle of nowhere. She was in Oshawa, Ont., which has a population of about 150,000 and is just east of the centre of the universe (also known as Toronto).

While Arden had many ardent supporters on Twitter there was also blowback. Like Trudeau, she had to clarify her comments the next day.

"I am so sorry for anything negative I may have said. You are certainly NOT in the middle of nowhere! Just a figure of speech!!"

The Oshawa mayor fought back with all the reasons Oshawa isn't in the middle of nowhere and invited Arden to visit. I can only imagine the outrage in Winnipeg had Arden said something similar about it.

There were many reasons Arden was frustrated. She also said in a written response to some of her critics that she had the dog in his carrying bag, with his head sticking out the opening, through the train station and as she boarded and no employees said anything.

Unfortunately for Trudeau and Arden, even if their statements were made in frustration, even if they were things many people would also have been frustrated about, they are not just any Canadians.

Celebrities no longer need the paparazzi to document their lives in great detail to the public.

They do it themselves on Twitter.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition March 19, 2012 $sourceSection0

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