It seems Twittering might have put Chicago chef Rick Bayless in trouble with the White House.
Bayless, who is the Chef at Chicago’s Frontera Grill and Topolobampo, is in Washington, D.C. to prepare Wednesday night’s State Dinner to honor Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Chef Bayless was so excited about the trip he started tweeting about it Monday.
But the chef’s tweets abruptly stopped Tuesday after the White House reportedly put the kibosh on the news blasts, according to the Sun-Times’ Lynn Sweet. Sweet has since updated her story to reflect comments made by Bayless, saying he didn’t tweet from inside the White House.
But it appears the on-message White House does have a moratorium on tweeting from inside the Pennsylvania Avenue kitchen. Staff there likely wants to avoid any embarrassment after the last State Dinner, when Tareq and Michaele Salahi crashed the party — which ultimately contributed to White House Social Secretary Desiree Rogers’ ouster.
It’s not like Bayless included anything of national security in his Tweets, or anything of interest at all for that matter.
11:59 A.M. May 17: “Just arrived in DC. Headed to White House kitchens. I have to say: I’m a little nervous…”
8:46 P.M. May 17: “The White House staff could not be nicer&more professional! Most worried about ingredients, but all will b here 4 big day! Super excited”
24 hours later May 18: “Thanks 2 the 100s of well wishers! Ready 4 day 2 n rather small White House kitchen.Chef was challenged by some ingred,but last arrive 2day”
That’s where the cooking tweets stopped, leading to speculation that Bayless was silenced. But Bayless’ said via twitter that his tweets didn’t come from inside the White House, because he knows that’s a no-no and the Sun-Times edited their story to reflect so.
Is the White House censoring Tweets? I guess we’ll never know. Where’s one of those fancy NSA satellites when you need one? I bet Jack Bauer could help. Heck, he’ll be out of a job by next week anyway.
Via NBC Chicago.
Related posts:
Do You Twitter, But Not Tweet?
Where the Tweet are you?
Tweet Tees Add Geek Street Cred (and a Possible $500 in Your Pocket)
Twitterlerts bring real time tweet alerts to your BlackBerry inbox
Are you Tweeting too Hard?
Tweet and Retweet- via SMS
Twitterific for iPhone 2.02 update removes twitpocalypse problem
Helping your finances with Mint.com Money Tweets
Pingback: manageyourtweet