Has Joey Styles Finally Come To His Senses?

Former WWE announcer/current WWE.com-WWE creative team conduit Joey Styles has been posting some pretty controversial things on his WWE-promoted Twitter page, http://twitter.com/WWEJoeyStyles. The account started out as a vehicle to promote the WWE product in cyberspace but over time he has introduced his political stance on issues and turned the page into his personal political pulpit. He has taken some very polarizing stances in his Tweets (it should be noted that Joe Bonsignore is a proud Republican and has been for years, as I can attest from personal experience after working with him years ago). The thing that makes it interesting is that he still uses the page to Tweet WWE related things to those following him, which definitely blurs the line as to whether it's a WWE page or a personal sounding board.

Here are a few examples of some of the recent Tweets he has made.

On April 23 he wrote: " Check out wwe.com to see how I contributed to Earth Day. Today I will drive over a windmill turbine farm with a gas guzzling Hummer."

On May 17 he wrote: " The (Catholic) University of Notre Dame should be ashamed of themselves for having pro-abortion President Obama speak at their graduation."

Then yesterday, he posted these three things in a 10 minute span:

" Our marxist president is in the Middle East apologizing for for the USA and snubbing Israel. The disgrace continues."

" Obama hid from his middle name, Hussein, during the election and now brags about how many Muslims live in America. He's a fraud."

" By the way, he used taxpayer money to turn ownership of Chrysler and GM to the UAW which donated millions to his campaign. That's a payoff!"

About four hours after he wrote those thing, he posted this: " I just want to make clear that the passionate political commentary posted here is mine personally and not in any way those of WWE, Inc."

I have to state that I have no concrete information as to why he made that last entry but I have to tell you that Styles' Tweets have been bugging me lately. It's not that he is taking a political stance either. I respect everyone's right to feel however they feel about political and social issues.

What bothered me about it is that it's really bad for WWE business to have one of their employees potentially alienating fans that signed up for his Tweeter page to get information on the company, not lectured about politics. In a country where there are actually more Democrats than Republicans at present, it makes no sense for Styles to use his WWE connected Twitter account to annoy a number of hardcore WWE fans. The fact that he suddenly posted how these were his opinions and his alone really makes me wonder if someone in the office saw what he was doing and wanted to know if he has gone insane.

Now, again I am not saying that he doesn't have a right to his opinions because he most certainly does. But, voicing them under a company account is just plain stupid. If he wants to rant against the politics of the president he should create a Twitter account under his real name and do it there. After his latest Tweet, I am wondering if someone in the company has told him that very thing.



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