Paris Hilton might not be anyone’s pick to win the next “Celebrity Jeopardy,” but the idea that she would confuse Nelson Mandela, who passed away Thursday, with Martin Luther King, Jr. seemed nearly impossible to fathom.
Sure enough, a supposed Tweet in which Hilton allegedly credited Mandela with the “I Have a Dream” speech was quickly exposed as a fake.
Shortly after the inaccuracy was confirmed, “Deleted Tweets,” the account responsible for the hoax, was poetically deleted.
Unwilling to let common sense serve as her only vindication, however, Paris Hilton officially responded to the story–and then posted an actual Twitter tribute to Mandela.
“I just landed off an airplane & heard the news. I never wrote that tweet, it is a fake. Obviously I know that speech was by MLK,” wrote Hilton. “Whoever made that stupid fake tweet lacks respect to the loss the world is mourning right now. Same goes for all the blogs who ran with it.
“Just landed & heard the sad new (sic) about Nelson Mandela. He was a true Hero & the world is a better place because of him. May he rest in peace.”