FOOT IN MOUTH

Twitter is good. You can connect with people from around the globe. Journalists, comedians, and your common, day-to-day, boring individuals (such as myself) can post comments about anything and everything. It's a phenomenal tool to interact with a large audience. Unfortunately, it can lead to foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Glen Murray in less controversial times. (Photo from cbc.ca)

Cue former Winnipeg mayor, Glen Murray. Murray made (defamatory) comments warning readers that Rob Ford, Toronto's new mayor, is a bigot. On the eve of Toronto's mayoral election, Murray tweeted "If u vote Ford u r voting for bigotry." (Somebody should have told Murray that he has 140 characters available, it wouldn't have killed him to spell out 'you' and 'are'...)

To make matters worse, he retweeted a comment that read: "Ford, [Tim] Hudak [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper [are] the trifecta of Republican-style, right-wing ignorance and bigotry."

 

Rob Ford (Photo from nationalpost.ca)

Although Glen Murray's recent defamatory comments truly are egregious and show poor judgment coming from an accomplished politician, it illustrates a fatal flaw in social media: people can write things without thinking about the possible repercussions. Had Murray taken the time to consider how his message may have been received, I would like to think he wouldn't have posted the tweets at all.

I truly look forward to more outrageous comments from our elected leaders as they learn to use social media effectively, and may they all be as controversial as this example.