Like his fellow NFL running back Rashard Mendenhall, Tashard Choice of the Cowboys got some attention this week for a tweet related to the death of Osama bin Laden. Unlike Mendenhall, Choice quickly apologized.
It all started when Choice settled in to watch To Catch a Predator on CNBC and was disappointed when he saw that the program had been preempted.
“No to catch a predator tonight. Not cool cnbc,” Choice wrote on Twitter.
However, once Choice realized why CNBC wasn’t showing To Catch a Predator, he quickly offered an apology of sorts.
“My bad my tweet people osama bin laden being dead is better news,” Choice tweeted, following it with a reference to a Michael Jackson lyric about making the world a better place.
With that, Choice was back to tweeting about To Catch a Predator, including a message to the show’s host, Chris Hansen, telling him, “I just wanna say u are the best damn reporter I ever seen. I love how ask questions and you work. Hope you are a cowboy fan.”
The story wasn’t over there, though. Some media outlets, including the Dallas Morning News, picked up on Choice’s tweets. Choice then tweeted again to question why the newspaper thought his tweets were newsworthy.
“That’s crazy they would put that in this newspaper cause I didn’t even know what happen till my tweet people told. Unbelievable,” Choice wrote.
The lesson for Choice, and really for everyone, is that when you tweet something, it’s out there for everyone to see, and you’ll have no control over what others do with it. Choice may think it’s crazy that a newspaper would pick up his idle musing about not being able to watch his favorite TV show, but that’s the reality of the world today.
