Ashton Kutcher in Twitter-storm

Two and a Half Men star Ashton Kutcher has landed in the middle of a self-made Twitter storm for defending a football coach who had been sacked amid a sexual abuse scandal.

The coach, Joe Paterno, has been criticised for failing to contact authorities when he was told about possible misconduct against minors by an assistant coach nine years earlier.

“How do you fire Jo Pa? #insult #noclass as a hawkeye fan I find it in poor taste,” Kutcher tweeted.

But Kutcher, who now claims he tweeted without realising the full context of the story, was roundly blasted for his own poor taste by many of his prolific followers.

“Last night after returning home from work I walked by the television and simply saw a headline that Joe Paterno had been fired. Having no more information than that, I assumed he had been fired due to poor performance as an aging coach,” Kutcher later explained.

“With that assumption (how dare I assume) I posted a tweet defending his career. I then when [sic] about my evening, had some dinner, did a little work, and about an hour later turned on ESPN where I got the full story.

“I quickly went back on my twitter account and found a hailstorm of responses calling me an ‘idiot’ and several other expletives that I’ve become accustom [sic] to hearing for almost anything I post.”

The actor is now turning over the management of his feed to a company called Katalyst Media, which he co-founded, “to ensure the quality of it’s [sic] content”.

Source: The Age