Romney Spokesman Under Fire For Tweets Also Edits His Own Wikipedia Page

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Romney Spokesman Under Fire For Tweets Also Edits His Own Wikipedia Page | Last week, we noted that Mitt Romney’s new foreign policy spokesman Richard Grenell had a colorful life on Twitter, often dispensing biting comments about political opponents, and women in particular. Grennell has since scrubbed much of his online presence, deleting over 800 tweets and taking down his person website. Now, Buzz Feed’s Andrew Kaczynski points out (on Twitter) that Grenell edits his own Wikipedia page. The edit page shows that most of the edits have to basic biographical information, such as his job history. But the editing suggest someone concerned about their public perception online, and thus someone who should probably have known better than, or saw nothing wrong with, making derogatory comments about MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s femininity, for example.

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2012/04/23/469680/richard-grenell-wikipedia/

Grenell causes a stir

By Steve Benen

Ordinarily, a presidential campaign hiring a foreign policy spokesperson would generate very few headlines, but the Romney campaign's decision to add Richard Grenell to the team has proven to be a little more interesting.

For some on the right, Grenell's sexual orientation is apparently supposed to be a dealbreaker.

A leading anti-gay figure in the Republican Party attacked Governor Mitt Romney for hiring an openly gay spokesman, sending a shot from the GOP's socially-conservative base across the nominee's bow.

Bryan Fischer, the director of issue analysis for the Tupelo, Miss.-based American Family Association, is probably the most straightforwardly anti-gay Republican to appear regularly in the party's mainstream. Presidential candidates including Rick Santorum have appeared on his radio show, and he spoke at the Values Voter Summit in Washington in October.

He responded yesterday to Romney's decision to hire an openly-gay -- "out & loud gay," in Fischer's terms -- foreign policy spokesman, Richard Grenell by calling it a "message to the pro-family community" of "drop dead."

Today, Fischer announced a series of steps he expects Romney to take in order to "contain the collateral damage from this spectacularly misbegotten decision." Among the demands: bringing back "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and a formal endorsement of North Carolina's pending anti-gay ballot measure.

From a very different perspective, some on the other end of the political spectrum have taken note of Grenell's messages on social media, many of which have targeted women in politics and media. Michael Calderone reported over the weekend that Grenell "appears to have deleted more than 800 of his past tweets following scrutiny over numerous swipes aimed at the media, prominent Democratic women and the Gingriches. Grenell also apparently took down his personal site, which featured writing on politics, foreign affairs and the media."

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http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11357049-grenell-causes-a-stir

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