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Obama tweets draw racist, hateful comments

David Jackson
USA TODAY
An illustration shows President Obama's Twitter page on a laptop in Washington, D.C.

Sometimes it's the "anti-social media."

President Obama's new Twitter account is drawing a slew of racist and sexist comments that include calls for his suicide or his lynching.

Using the Twitter handle POTUS -- the acronym for President of the United States -- Obama's messages are pretty basic.

"An honor to address the Coast Guard class of 2015," says his most his recent post. "Confident they'll help us meet big challenges like climate change."

While some of the comments are rather tame -- "how about those gas prices?" -- many others are unprintable.

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The New York Times writes about the new Twitter account's debut earlier this week:

"It took only a few minutes for Mr. Obama's account to attract racist, hate-filled posts and replies. They addressed him with racial slurs and called him a monkey. One had an image of the president with his neck in a noose.

The posts reflected the racial hostility toward the nation's first black president that has long been expressed in stark terms on the Internet, where conspiracy theories thrive and prejudices find ready outlets. But the racist Twitter posts are different because now that Mr. Obama has his own account, the slurs are addressed directly to him, for all to see."

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