KitchenAid tweet about Obama's dead grandma causes a stir

KitchenAid is not a United Nations program to help people in faraway, impoverished places obtain designer kitchens.

Instead, it's a company that offers you "more ways to make it your way" in the kitchen.

How odd, then, that it should have inserted a rather blunt knife into tonight's presidential debate.

For the company's Twitter feed was adorned with this musing: "Obamas gma even knew it was going 2 b bad! 'She died 3 days b4 he became president'. #nbcpolitics."

The "gma" is not "Good Morning America" but grandma.

Who, then, might have been responsible for this remarkably unfunny attempt at funny?

I am grateful to Mashable for having identified the tweet before it was removed. However, KitchenAid did add a follow-up tweet that read: "Deepest apologies for an irresponsible tweet that is in no way a representation of the brand's opinion. #nbcpolitics

Corporate Twitter accounts have tended to fall into the hands of rebels of late.

Just a few days ago, Microsoft's account was garlanded with a tweet joking about the very serious Ann Coulter.

And who could ever forget Chrysler's Twitter account last year that magically offered: "I find it ironic that Detroit is known as the #motorcity and yet no one here knows how to f***ing drive."

In both these instances, the Twitter feed controller was intending to tweet from his personal account and got his fingers crossed.

In the case of KitchenAid, it wasn't clear at first whether this was operator error or operator ignorance.

However, a subsequent company tweet declared: "It was carelessly sent in error by a member of our Twitter team who, needless to say, won't be tweeting for us anymore."

The head of the KitchenAid brand, Cynthia Soledad, immediately took to Twitter to offer this: "I would like to personally apologize to President @BarackObama, his family and everyone on Twitter for the offensive tweet sent earlier."

I wonder if KitchenAid will be able to stand the heat.