Longoria has a retweet problem.
A week after causing an uproar on the social networking site by retweeting a prison rape joke aimed at GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan, the Desperate Housewives star sparked another furor by retweeting a message calling Mitt Romney a racist and questioning why any woman or minority would vote for him.
The tweet by user @imnotyuri -- whose profile is worth checking out because of the cool baby sloth photos -- was directed at Eva Longoria’s handle and read: “I have no idea why any woman/minority can vote for Romney. You have to be stupid to vote for such a racist/misogynistic twat.”
Longoria, who serves as a co-chair of the Obama campaign, retweeted the message, but shortly thereafter scrubbed it from her timeline.
But not before she offended a whole lot of Romney supporters.
Conservative aggregator Drudge Report, which drives more news traffic on the Web than any site except Google, linked to a Washington Examiner article slamming Longoria for poor taste. Pundit Michelle Malkin slammed Longoria in a series of tweets, prompting an flurry of messages from her conservative followers. The Café Con Leche Republicans, a Latino conservative group that supports immigration reform, demanded an apology.
It wasn’t only conservatives who attacked her. The progressive blog Latino Rebels called the retweet about Romney “vulgar,” adding:
[T]here are better ways to behave when you are officially working on a campaign, and unfortunately, Longoria’s social media blunders are not the way you do it.”
The user who originally posted the tweet seemed to stand by her message, to judge from this subsequent tweet:
In response to the controversy Longoria later tweeted that she had "never personally called any conservative women stupid. I think you are all beautiful and strong and smart!" She also seemed to intimate that the controversial retweet may have been a computer malfunction:
Longoria’s Twitter gaffe comes just days after she drew a similar round of criticism for retweeting a message reading: “Biden is making Paul Ryan his prison bitch! #vpdebate.”
Check out users’ reactions to Longoria’s tweet in the slideshow above. Did her comments offend you? Are they befitting of the national co-chair of a presidential campaign? Or is this all just a bunch of hype over nothing? Let us know what you think in the comments.
UPDATE: Thursday, Oct. 18, 12:10 p.m. EST -- Longoria apologized for offending people with the retweet, via Twitter, writing: "I use Twitter as a platform for all Americans and their opinions. Sorry if people were offended by retweet. Obviously not my words or my personal view. I respect all Americans #FreedomOfSpeech."
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story said that the user @imnotyuri had deleted the original tweet that Longoria retweeted. That is not correct. The original tweet remains, timestamped Oct. 16. An earlier version also mistakenly referred to Michelle Malkin as "Elizabeth" Malkin.