Yesterday night, Ashton Kutcher made news with his tweet questioning the decision by Penn State to fire Joe Paterno. Kutcher quickly back-tracked when he was met with a deluge of criticism and has essentially surrendered his account to his publicists at this time. Since that time, very few other well-known individuals (or really any people outside of some rioting Penn State students) have come to Paterno’s defense.
Enter Jeffrey Jordan, the oldest son of Michael Jordan, who goes by the Twitter handle @heirjordan13. Jeffrey currently plays alongside his brother Marcus at Central Florida although both were among a group of five players suspended by the school while the NCAA looks into their eligibility. Around 2:40 PM he sent out this tweet:
We have already gone down the road of athletes and their freedom of speech/expression, but this is an interesting sentiment for Jordan to have especially since his father was famously quoted as saying, “Republicans buy shoes too,” when asked why he did not publicly support an African-American Democratic candidate Harvey Gantt against Republican Jesse Helms, whom many consider one of the most racist politicians in recent memory. Given that it is a rather interesting political/cultural standing, we find it amusing that the first person to retweet it was former Kansas star Sherron Collins, who would appear to be agreeing with Jeff based on his retweet.
It appears that Jeff has already started to feel the backlash on Twitter although he is standing by his beliefs based on this series of tweets:
Updated: Marcus has also chimed in supporting his brother’s statement and saying that Paterno should have stayed until after the game.
We are assuming that Jeff and Marcus will be getting a call from their father about public relations and how to avoid making controversial statements pretty soon. In the meantime, it looks like the Penn State students who were protesting last night are not alone.