Surprise, people. You should watch what you tweet, especially if it's racist stupidity that will come back to bite you in ass. Case in point, the message above, posted on Twitter back in January.
The latest act of idiocy comes from Kathlyn Ehl, a campaign staff member for Washington state gubernatorial candidate Rob McKenna: Rob McKenna's Assistant Kathlyn Ehl: "shut up and speak english #asians."
The tweet was deleted shortly after The Stranger broke the story yesterday. But not before plenty of folks had seen it, screencapped and spread the word. Kathlyn, you're busted:
Since posting this, Ehl has deleted dozens of tweets, including the two I posted as screen grabs. She had 213 tweets earlier today; that number is down to 176 tweets. So I suppose that means Ehl had 37 postings too unsavory for the campaign? While we haven't heard back from her, she's probably seen this post, given that one of her priorities at the campaign is "monitoring the media," according to her LinkedIn profile.Ehl has since apologized, saying that her actions were "unfortunate" and "offensive." That's great and all, but don't people get fired over this kind of stuff? Do you real want someone like this on your campaign staff?
Meanwhile, it turns out McKenna's campaign actually told folks to follow Ehl on Twitter last Friday. But the McKenna campaign may soon delete that tweet, given that they have completely scrubbed Twitter of its staff list that I linked to earlier. So I've gone ahead and posted a screen grab of that tweet and the former web page—including Ehl's listing—after the jump. The McKenna campaign still has not commented.
Rob McKenna's apparently cool with it. Ehl will reportedly keep her job. More here: McKenna's policy assistant: 'Shut up and speak english #asians.'
