Jose Canseco Talks Tough on Twitter, Then Protects His Profile

No one I know of has accused Jose Canseco of being a portrait of sanity. I tend, however, to think he’s more of a harmless blowhard than he lets on, and I think Vai Sikahema’s knockout of Canseco is more or less his post-baseball image. In any case, on Sunday, Canseco got fed up with what I assume is an intolerable stream of bile directed at him on the Internet. And this is what he tweeted:

Now, Canseco’s within his rights to say that, and justified in thinking that the media has “made (him) a monster” or that “being nice and quiet has gotten him no where”. He’s free to think and say what he wants. But try going to his account, if you’re not one of Canseco’s over 325,000 followers on Twitter, and you’re going to get a “this user is protected” message. That’s why these links are all unedited screengrabs, save the censored one above, and why I wonder what point Canseco’s trying to make?

Canseco tweeted, just yesterday, that Twitter was ”(his) venue to speak to the masses.“ Now, those masses are unable to see his thoughts by just punching in a URL; they must sign up for Twitter, and follow him. Canseco can “get his message out” on Twitter, but won’t just let his message be free for all to look at without signing up for the service?

No, Canseco doesn’t have to bite his tongue. But protecting his tweets implies that he or someone close to him recognizes that he might have to worry about his mouth biting him in the rump, and doing so just now suggests that those statements have happened very recently.

If, Jose, you truly respect all opinions, respect this one: you should keep your Twitter account open, not protected. Doing anything else just makes it look like you have something to hide.↵