"OUTED": PaulRyansMom is not Paul Ryan's mom
@PaulRyansMom is not Paul Ryan's mom
Comments (1) By DYLAN BYERS | 8/20/12 4:52 PM EDT
The Washington Post's Bonnie Goldstein, of the "She The People" blog, reports (albeit erroneously):
It appears that the Twitter account @PaulRyansMom is the latest social-networking sock puppet to compete for eyeballs and voter saturation. I recognize that effective optics are necessary in a high-stakes presidential election, but it saddened me to see how quickly the message machine had replaced the appealing 3-D woman in yellow.
Since Saturday, the official cyber-presence of the VP hopeful’s snowbird mother has been cranking out 140-character campaign slogans on Twitter.... As of Monday morning, more than 180 people had followed the Betty blast (disturbingly, several describe their own Twitter feeds as “LIVE SEX CHAT.”) As I marveled at the thoroughness of the Romney social media directors, I noticed how quickly names of most of her Twitter fans were added to the list of those she ostensibly “follows.”
How Goldstein got from "it appears that..." to "the official cyber-presence" is a bit of a mystery. My colleague Juana Summers confirms with the Romney/Ryan campaign that @PaulRyansMom is not, in fact, Paul Ryan's mom.
UPDATE (5:06 p.m.): Further confirmation, if any were needed:
Dylan Byers@DylanByers 20 Aug 12
Memo to WaPo: @PaulRyansMom is not Paul Ryan's mom: politi.co/NCfwuA
Paul Ryans Mom@PaulRyansMom
@DylanByers You may have outed me but I enjoy reading your stuff. Have a good day!
http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/2012/08/paulryansmom-is-not-paul-ryans-mom-132610.html