Clearly feeling the heat from this blog’s growing readership, the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza took to the pages of that newspaper today, calling on politicians to avoid Twitter.
Citing several examples of Twitter gaffes and missteps by some political tweeters, Cillizza warns:
Sure, in theory it makes sense to provide benign daily updates letting your constituents know you are hard at work fighting for them.
[…]
The thousands of innocuous tweets you send won’t matter. It’s the one time that you decide to pop off in the space of 140 characters — perhaps after a cocktail or two at a fundraiser — where problems will arise. Make one slip of the tongue, er, finger, and the sweet joys of Twitter will sour in a moment.
We’ve yet to see any lawmaker response to the piece, though some politicians have before articulated why they use the medium.