The Home Depot is apologizing for a tweet it posted for promoting ESPN's "College GameDay" program that "featured a person in a monkey suit sitting between two black drummers, with the caption: 'Which drummer is not like the others?,'" according to Carla Caldwell of the ATLANTA BUSINESS CHRONICLE. The tweet was "blasted Thursday on Twitter as 'racist' and 'offensive' and later removed by the company." The Home Depot later tweeted, "We have zero tolerance for anything so stupid and offensive. Deeply sorry. We terminated agency and individual who posted it." The company did not disclose the identity of the agency in question (BIZJOURNALS.com, 11/8). In Chicago, Marcus Gilmer wrote the tweet "was an attempt to be clever (I guess?) but, instead, it just played on an old, horrendous racial caricature." The Home Depot is now "in damage control overdrive on social media," while "College GameDay" has "kept their tweets focused to solely football" (SUNTIMES.com, 11/7). NBC's Willie Geist said, "We're talking this morning about something that seems to be happening more and more often, and that's a big American company apologizing for a tweet that goes out on its account." Geist: "There's not much of a filter between what goes on in somebody's head and what goes out to the world over Twitter, and this morning it's Home Depot." NBC's Matt Lauer said, "Just because you have two thumbs doesn't mean you should hit the send button." NBC's Savannah Guthrue: "It's hard to believe that actually made it into the public domain" ("Today," NBC, 11/8).
