Former CNN anchor Campbell Brown, a leading opponent of teacher tenure, accused her pro-teacher-union foes Sunday of using soft-core Twitter porn to shamelessly smear her.
Defenders of teacher tenure had launched an anti-Brown campaign last week that included a parody Twitter page @TheRealCampbellBrown.
The campaign, by the New York-based Alliance for Quality Education, sought to paint Brown as a front for deep-pocketed special interests and lightning-rod former Washington, DC, schools chief Michelle Rhee.
The group got a generally favorable write-up on pop-culture Web site BuzzFeed on Friday.
And by Sunday, dozens of the porn-tinged Twitter feeds repeated BuzzFeed’s headline, “Progressive Groups Launch Campaign To Paint Campbell Brown As a ‘Right-Wing Elitist’” and linked to its story.
The raunchy tweeters included @CynthiaNips — which has a picture of adult-film actress and Sarah Palin look-alike Lisa Ann as its cover photo.
Another Twitter feed, @SarahFreemen, also linked to the story amid its other tweets that included close-up crotch shots of actress Mischa Barton and model Miranda Kerr.
A rep for Brown lashed out at the seamy situation.
“To date, the teachers union and its allies have launched a Web site showing Campbell as a puppet, focused on her looks instead of her arguments and inferred that she can’t make a decision without her husband’s approval, all in an effort to distract from the fact that the families of seven public school children are so desperate for a decent education for their kids that they have sued the state of New York,’’ said Brown’s spokesman, Stefan Friedman.
But Friedman stopped short of tracing the tweets to the United Federation of Teachers.
“We hope the union isn’t behind these shenanigans, but given their sexist tactics to date, we wouldn’t be surprised if they were,” he said.
A spokesman for the UFT laughed when asked if his union had anything to do with the raunchy stunt.
“I’m completely unfamiliar with this,” said UFT rep Dick Riley.
With 200,000 members nationwide, Riley said he can’t rule out any individual union member going on a wildcat assault against Brown, but he insisted UFT leadership would never launch such a sexist attack.
A rep for the Alliance for Quality Education also disavowed any knowledge of the porn smear.
“We believe that’s absolutely disgusting and it distracts from the real issues of Campbell Brown’s attacks on public education,” group spokesman Julian Vinocur said.