A p.r. executive working for media titan Barry Diller was canned Saturday after igniting controversy with a distasteful tweet about AIDS.
Justine Sacco was boarding a flight from London to South Africa on Friday when she tweeted: “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!”
Media outlets everywhere picked up the tweet within hours — while Sacco, 30, was still in the air flying toward Cape Town.
“We take this issue very seriously, and we have parted ways with the employee in question,” IAC officials said in a statement.
“There is no excuse for the hateful statements that have been made and we condemn them unequivocally.”
Sacco was a senior director of corporate communications for Barry Diller’s IAC, which includes The Daily Beast, Ask.com, College Humor and OKCupid. She did not respond to a request seeking comment.
Sacco appears to have a history of questionable tweets.
She once posted, “I can’t be fired for things I say while intoxicated right?”
Her 140-character doozies — now deleted from Twitter along with her profile — also include, “I had a sex dream about an autistic kid last night.”