Ashton Kutcher, Twitter quitter? Kutcher came to Joe Paterno's tweet defense Wednesday, expressing outrage over the Penn State coach's firing. Unfortunately, Kutcher hadn't looked into why Paterno was fired before he hit "Tweet."
Things have not gone well since then for @aplusk — to the point where on Thursday he essentially surrendered his Twitter autonomy to his publicists.
"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," he said in a statement. "My sincere apologies to anyone who I have offended. It was a mistake that I don't think will happen again."
Kutcher, sometimes referred to as the mayor of Twitter, has more than 8 million followers on the microblogging site.
"How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste," Kutcher said in a tweet that has since been deleted — which he said he sent after seeing only a headline that Paterno had been fired. "I assumed that he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach."
Paterno, as most of the world with access to the Internet or a TV knows by now, was fired in the wake of a child sex-abuse scandal in which he admitted he was one of two people who knew what was allegedly going on.
Kutcher, as maybe fewer know, recently stepped up to advocate against child sexual exploitation. Ouch.
Despite his rapid retractions and apologies, the Twitter world lit into Kutcher, including this gem: "Who is more ignorant? @Aplusk, or the over EIGHT MILLION idiots who follow him?"
Kutcher's response: "honestly it's me."
The Twitter hand-off does give the "Two and a Half Men" star cover in another embarrassing area: So much for parsing his tweets for an explanation of that alleged tryst with Sara Leal while his wife, Demi Moore, was away on business.
That said, we just stumbled across this, which @aplusk tweeted last week. And we agree with him: Maybe the cutest picture ever.
Ashton Kutcher's Paterno tweet sends actor running for PR cover
