Ben Heller of Bloomfield Hills, Mich, with his wife Gabby and their ... more >Foot in mouth in under 140 characters
The best way to smooth over the sudden firing of one of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s Cabinet members is to shoot out an awkward tweet, right? We mean, no one’s ever gotten into trouble because of a popular website that lets you instantaneously talk to thousands of people, right?
The person who mans the District's Department of the Environment’s Twitter handle certainly knows that, because he or she shot off a missive on Twitter that said “face palm” after the agency’s director, Christophe A.G. Tulou, was dismissed by the city administrator Friday.
It had been a quiet afternoon at the John A. Wilson Building. Multiple council offices were locked and dark (lawmakers are in recess), and there was the hum here and there of a maintenance crew doing some work in the chamber’s lobby.
But suddenly, the office of City Administrator Allen Y. Lew said it had dismissed Mr. Tulou for a “serious breach of protocol.”
The DDOE then tweeted the offending material before deleting it rather quickly. Not quickly enough, though, as several members of the city hall press corps retweeted it out to their own followers.
A council staffer called them out as well, asking, “Really, guys?”
Soon enough, the DDOE tweeter had a little more to say: “Apologies for that tweet. That was unacceptable.”
— Tom Howell Jr. contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2013 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.
Matthew Cella is The Washington Times’ Metro editor. He can be reached at mcella@washingtontimes.com.
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