It began inconspicuously enough — a Ronald Reagan quote here, a whiff of harmless promotion there — the mark of a seasoned city official wading cautiously into social media.
In midsummer, a slight shift was perceptible, hastened perhaps by an ill-advised mix of Yankees baseball, Twitter and "too much wine."
And by the end of August, it happened: Joseph J. Lhota, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, that staid and stodgy emblem of local bureaucracy, had weighed in on the cancellation of "Jersey Shore." Twice.
"The fact that the show was canceled, to me, was a great thing for society," Mr. Lhota said during a recent interview in his Midtown office. "And I thought it should be celebrated."
In a city of many prominent officials, meddlesome reporters and vigilant public relations officers charged with preventing the first group from speaking out of turn to the second, Mr. Lhota's Twitter account stands apart.
He likes the New York Jets, readers learn, and does not appear to care for the state comptroller, Thomas P. DiNapoli. He is a staunch defender of cheese and seems to enjoy the comedy of an account called @DRUNKHULK.
He has mistyped a Yankees score and blamed the error on an evening of drinking. ("It was sauvignon blanc," he clarified this week. "I find chardonnay too heavy.") He has shared with followers a tabloid cartoon depicting Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg painting a "breast feeding lane" beside a bike lane on a New York City street.
Once, apparently, he was duped into clicking a link he should not have. "SpamAlert," he wrote on Sept. 3. "DIRECT MESSAGES FROM ME ARE BOGUS."
Capital letters are a common feature of @JoeLhota, as if the author's booming voice has been embedded into the iPad from which he writes.
After actively using the Web site for a few months, Mr. Lhota, 57, a former deputy mayor under Rudolph W. Giuliani, has deemed himself "generationally too old to really be on Twitter."
Of course, there are many public officials on Twitter, eager to trumpet their own proposals and remain as visible as possible to constituents. Some politicians, from the famous to the virtually anonymous, have even inspired parody accounts.
But rarely has a figure rendered satire so superfluous. Surely no doppelgänger of Mr. Lhota's would have thought to relay the Drudge Report message about a driver who swerved to avoid a moose, only to crash into a bear.
Nor would a faker have found occasion to consider the sale of cans of Paris air ("GEEZ, are we this gullible?"), an article linking financial stress to weight gain in men ("that explains everything") and another detailing a man who started a fire after microwaving his underwear.
"SOME PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS," Mr. Lhota wrote on that occasion.
Mr. Lhota said he first created an account to follow journalists and news organizations, not to write messages. He unwittingly posted his first message in August 2011, when he "hit the wrong button" and republished a reference to an ABC News segment on George W. Bush.
After that, the account went dark until July 5, when Mr. Lhota said he was moved to comment on the anniversary of the free transfer between subways and buses in New York.
And so it began.
"People think of the M.T.A. as a nameless, faceless bureaucracy and a huge organization that no one really has their arms around," Julie Wood, a spokeswoman for the mayor and the proprietor of his office's Twitter account, @NYCMayorsOffice, said. "Here is the guy who does have his arms around it, and he turns out to be this funny, interesting person."
The account has supplied a glimpse into Mr. Lhota's personal and political history. In his biography section, Mr. Lhota calls himself a "9/11 cancer survivor," a reference to a lymphoma diagnosis six years ago. He said he wanted to make a point of his outrage at any opposition to health coverage for first responders to the 2001 attacks.
The biography section used to include, "unabashed libertarian," but this was removed.
"It requires restraint," Mr. Lhota said of Twitter, noting that he had removed the phrase because he did not want to appear overly partisan in his current job.
But even restrained, Mr. Lhota's entries have contributed to occasional anxiety for transportation authority officials.
"I want him out there talking," Adam Lisberg, the authority's chief spokesman, said. "But generally before we put out a message, we talk about what it will be first. Joe is Joe, unfiltered."
Often, Mr. Lhota said, Twitter users write to him about their commutes, carping about a wayward bus or a station without a countdown clock. He does not respond, he said, and he plans to add a disclaimer in his biography that the account is a personal one. (Questions related to the transportation authority should be directed to the customer information page on its Web site, the agency said.)
Still, Mr. Lhota appears to revel in at least some of the attention he receives on Twitter.
"I had 36 mentions," he said gleefully after speaking recently at a forum at the Plaza Hotel. He asked a reporter if she had written anything about him on Twitter while he was speaking. She had, she said, and a short while later, Mr. Lhota reposted the message.
Mr. Lhota's following remains modest, at roughly 370 people through Monday. He said he would like to keep it that way.
He paused, groping for the name of the guy with all the followers.
"It's Ashton Kutcher, or whatever," he said finally. Then he questioned his foray into a younger man's game.
"Is that Facebook or Twitter?"
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 18 Sep, 2012
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Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/nyregion/joseph-lhota-mta-chief-tweets-to-his-delight.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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