What Mendenhall Should Have Said

Well, the horse's tongue is sticking out, it's lying on it's side, prepping for death.  However, in this age of social media, I'd like to train Mendenhall's big fancy, Ivy league educated PR team how to handle a Twitter flare up.  You see, what they wrote was silly.  It was beyond Mendenhall's scope, so it wasn't even as if we could argue he dictated it and it was cleaned up.  There are exceptionally smart, well rounded players out there, Polamalu comes to mind.  Mendenhall doesn't.  The PR team attempted to erase all things, leave what they thought was the worst, address it by not addressing it and hope it goes away.
(More after jump)



This won't happen in the days of social media.  I'm honestly a very tiny person in the world of social media.  I have a couple hundred friends on Facebook and on Twitter and those are my only sites.  Even there, it was a blow up amongst friends.

First, don't insult the American people, nor our troops by "I went to Germany, look at me!".  Germany.  We haven't been fighting there in oh... 60 years.  Germany has some very nice bases and quite frankly, we had tried to get over there when we had selection choices.  Now Kid Rock on the other hand, who never does a press release, almost never mentions anything, has done multiple USO tours.  Inside Afghanistan.  Terry Bradshaw went to Afghanistan (ironically, by way of another base where my husband was stationed, so though hubs and Dad were both deployed, they both met him at different bases and my dad ended up in a "Where's Waldo" on Fox NFL Sunday from Afghanistan).

Now, here's what Mendenhall's press release should have said:

Several tweets I have put up recently have caused great pain and confusion from my fellow man.  I need to explain that I did remove one tweet after I had said it because not only was it inappropriate, but I worded it incorrectly and it did not convey the message I had intended.  Another message on celebration of death was meant to create a thought provoking conversation with my followers.  Again, I worded this incorrectly.  Unfortunately, Twitter is limited and I don't have a great gift for short gab to get the conversation started in the meaningful manner I intended.


As for other tweets that I made, that may have been directed towards other people, especially women, while these were intended as jokes, they were stupid jokes.  They were immature, not necessary and I removed them so I can move forward and grow up as a man.  Sometimes, in the "boy" mentality, we say things on the center stage that we may not even realize are going to successful, wonderful women out there.


In all this, I realized that while we all have freedom of speech thanks to our troops, it's up to us to use that speech wisely, no matter who is listening.  I pray God can help me to continue to learn from this experience and learn from what my fellow man has taught me in not only how I can handle this situation in the future but how I can avoid hurt and pain to all of God's children.


Thanks,
Rashard