Delaware Governor Markell tweets bondage photo, apologizes

An inadvertent key stroke is being blamed for an odd post on Twitter from Delaware Governor Jack Markell’s official account.

The tweet was sent just before 10:30 a.m. Thursday while Markell was making an announcement about education funding at Warner Elementary School in Wilmington. The text of the tweet touted his support for disadvantaged students, but the picture didn’t really match.

Instead, the attached photo featured a woman from the shoulders up who was wearing a collar around her neck that connected to straps that apparently made up the rest of her bondage-type outfit.

About an hour later, Markell’s tweet was deleted and the account posted an apology:

An inappropriate photo was inadvertantly sent out earlier. We are looking into how this occurred but apologize to anyone who was offended.

— Gov. Jack Markell (@GovernorMarkell) September 4, 2014

Markell’s office issued a more detailed explanation a short time later, explaining that the staffer posting on the account accidentally altered the automatically generated link to a picture of the event Markell was attending.

“The picture linked to the tweet was a random, unrelated, and inappropriate picture that had been on the internet since 2010,” the statement said.

Markell’s office also offered a little light-hearted advice for others using social media to share pictures and other content: “The lessons here are not to compose tweets too quickly, and there is a lot of odd stuff on the internet. We just wish the accidental link had been a cat video.”