Ashton Kutcher is taking a cue from his critics, opting to scale back his Twitter use until he can “find a way to properly manage this feed.”
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The Two and a Half Men actor used his Twitter account on Wednesday, Nov. 10 to speak out on the controversial firing of longtime Penn State football coach Joe Paterno. “How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” Kutcher tweeted.
The 84-year-old Paterno, who has had a successful 46-year coaching career, was fired Wednesday amid a child-abuse sex scandal along with President Graham Spanier. The move came in the wake of former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky being charged last weekend with 40 counts of sexual abuse of children. Paterno has been criticized for failing to contact authorities when he was told about possible misconduct by Sandusky nine years ago.
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“Heard Joe was fired, fully recant previous tweet! Didn’t have full story. #admitwhenYoumakemistakes,” Kutcher posted about 30 minutes later, deleting his original tweet. “As an advocate in the fight against child sexual exploitation, I could not be more remorseful for all involved in the Penn St. case.”
The incident comes two months after a 9/11 gaffe, when Kutcher tweeted that it was the “greatest day of the year” because of the start of football season. Prior to that, the actor engaged in a public war with Village Voice after taking issue with a cover story that disputed several facts from his anti-human trafficking campaign. After a slew of critical responses to his most recent error, Kutcher informed fans that he intended to take an indefinite Twitter hiatus.
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“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,” he wrote on Wednesday night. The following day, he simply posted a link to a blog post titled “Twitter Management.”
“While I feel that running this feed myself gives me a closer relationship to my friends and fans I’ve come to realize that it has grown into more that a fun tool to communicate with people,” he wrote. “While I will continue to express myself through @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 content.”
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Now topping 8 million followers, Kutcher was once the king of Twitter as the first user to reach the milestone 1 million in 2009. At the time, he rallied for the honor against CNN’s account, promising to donate 10,000 mosquito bed nets for World Malaria Day. Kutcher even appeared on Oprah to introduce to talk show maven to the service.
Today Lady Gaga holds the top spot of the Twitter hierarchy with more than 15 million followers. She is trailed by Justin Bieber, who boasts over 14 million followers.
