Orlando’s language problem

Actor Orlando Jones set Twitter ablaze this week with his incendiary tweet, urging liberals to get respect by killing former Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin. On Saturday, he wrote: “Libyan Rebels kill Gaddafi, if American liberals want respect they better stop listening to Aretha & kill Sarah Palin(:” And since then, the 43-year-old star hasn’t backed away from his comments, tweeting, “I don’t think it’s just a joke is an apropo response,” and suggesting that people avoid reading his posts if they find them offensive.

Despite the backlash, on Tuesday, he continued to defend his comments by tweeting, “Obama gets more death threats than any Pres in US history,” and later writing (http://twitter.com/#!/TheOrlandoJones/status/128858867839926272), “My tweet was farcical not funny or a call to action. 100 bucks 2 the 1st person who can count the # of Palin jokes about killing Democrats(:” To be fair, Palin did get herself into a linguistic quagmire last year with her famous “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!” comment, which showed up on Twitter and directed readers to district maps with crosshairs over Democratic districts on her website — though she and others defended her language as metaphorical at the time — not an “[apropos] response.”