A friend forwarded me this article on L.A. Observed about the LA Mayor’s Twitter account. Turns out it’s not really Villaraigosa tweeting, but some Harvard college student interning at his office named Harry Rimalower.

Now, political offices, organizations and companies do this all the time – they have a designated tweeter to speak on their behalf because God knows the big cheeses don’t have time to tweet every hour. Most of the time it’s pretty obvious it is a designated tweeter, usually because the main page will tell you the message comes from a general office rather than the big guy. But in this case, it’s because the tweeter will write something you know the Mayor would never say. And sometimes, make the mistake of writing it in a completely different account:

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“HTRimalower: http://www.laobserved.com/archive/2009/06/villaraigosa_tweets_the_n.php: Why is L.A. Observed hating on me?”

Word, dawg.

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At this point I have to ask this college intern: What the HELL were you thinking?

Seriously. “Why is LA Observed hating on me?!” Does that sound like something ANY politician would say? What on God’s green Earth would prompt you to believe that a) the mayor gives a shit about anything L.A. Observed said about a Twitter account, and b) that he would respond in stereotypical street slang IN PUBLIC? The last politician to speak slag openly was Michael Steel, and even he learned his lesson.

Harry, my friend, you have a lot to learn about the world of political imaging. I guess that’s the class you’ve been skipping at Harvard.