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NRA magazine, Celebboutique.comdelete tweets after Coloradotheater shooting

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The American Rifleman, the journal of
the National Rifle Association, has
deleted a tweet that appeared to make light of Friday's shootings in Aurora, Colo., during a midnight
screening of "Dark Knight Rises." "Good morning, shooters," the message, published at 9:20 a.m. ET on
the American Rifleman's Twitter feed,
read. "Happy Friday! Weekend plans?" Not surprisingly, the tweet sparked
considerable outrage, with hundreds of users--including Michael Moore and Keith Olbermann--pointing their
followers to it. The American Rifleman deleted the
tweet several hours later but has yet
to issue a formal apology. It's unclear whether the tweet was
intentionally insensitive, or if the
magazine's tweeter was unaware of
the shootings that left 12 dead and
50 wounded. "Is there a way they wrote this
without seeing the news?" Audrey
Wauchope asked on Twitter. "This is what happens when you
don't read the news," the Columbia Journalism Review said. In a statement to CNN, a spokesman for the NRA said that "a single
individual, unaware of events in
Colorado, tweeted a comment that is
being completely taken out of
context." The NRA wasn't alone in appearing
insensitive to the tragedy. CelebBoutique.com--"the online
boutique loved by your fave celebs"--
took the "Aurora" trending topic as
an opportunity to promote its Kim
Kardashian inspired dress: "#Aurora is trending, clearly about
our Kim K inspired #Aurora dress ;),"
the boutique wrote on its Twitter feed Friday afternoon. "Shop: http://t.co/ IYGHqVsK." "Classless," Ken Fang wrote on Twitter. "Just classless." The tweet was deleted several hours
later. The shop did not respond to an
email from Yahoo News seeking
comment, but issued a statement
explaining the public relations
company responsible for updating its Twitter feed was unaware that
"#Aurora" was related to the
shooting. "We are incredibly sorry for our tweet
about Aurora," the company wrote
on Twitter. "Our PR is NOT US based
and had not checked the reason for
the trend, at that time our social media
was totally UNAWARE of the situation and simply thought it was another
trending topic. We have removed the
very insensitive tweet and will of
course take more care in future to
look into what we say in our tweets.
Again we do apologise for any offense caused this was not
intentional & will not occur again. Our
most sincere apologies for both the
tweet and situation." Earlier Friday, author Salman Rushdie faced a backlash over comments he made on Twitter following Friday's
massacre. "The 'right to bear arms' is the real
Bane of America," Rushdie wrote in an apparent reference to Bane, a
character in the blockbuster film who
some witnesses speculated the
suspected shooter was dressed as at
the time of the shooting. That wasn't quite as offensive as
Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert, who chose to link the Aurora shootings to
an assault on Judeo-Christian values. During a radio interview Friday
morning on the Heritage Foundation's
"Istook Live!" show Gohmert was
asked to explain why he believes acts
of violence such as this one take
place. "You know what really gets me, as a
Christian, is to see the ongoing
attacks on Judeo-Christian beliefs,
and then some senseless crazy act of
a derelict takes place," the Texas
congressman told host and former Republican Rep. Ernest Istook. Gohmert later said some of his
comments from the interview were
taken "out of context."
 
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