Roger Ebert Slammed for Ryan Dunn Drunk Driving Tweet

Shortly after the news broke that 34-year-old Jackass star Ryan Dunn was killed in a car crash (along with a passenger now identified as Zachary Hartwell, 30) in West Goshen County, Pa., early Monday morning, fans and friends -- including Johnny Knoxville -- took to Twitter to share their sadness. Film critic Roger Ebert, however, caused quite the Internet uproar when he posted a link to a news story that mentioned that Dunn had been out drinking in the hours leading up to the car wreck, and then tweeted: "Friends don't let jackasses drink and drive."

The post drew immediate criticism, most notably from Dunn pal and Jackass costar Bam Margera and from gossip blogger Perez Hilton.

"We understand what he's trying to say, but still -- this is extremely insensitive!" Hilton wrote on his blog. "We certainly agree that driving after drinking is wrong, we think there's no reason -- especially RIGHT NOW -- that anyone should be pointing fingers or poking fun at a truly tragic situation. Everyone makes mistake, and this is somebody's son. Too soon, Roger."

Margera was less diplomatic, raging at Ebert on his Twitter feed: "I just lost my best friend, I have been crying hysterical for a full day and piece of sh** roger ebert has the gall to put in his 2 cents." Margera continued, "About a jackass drunk driving and his is one, f*** you! Millions of people are crying right now, shut your fat f***ing mouth!!"

Ebert, 69, stood his ground in the following chaos, noting that comments to Hilton's blog post showed that most readers took Ebert's side in the fracas. Ebert tweeted again, "Perez Hilton's readers agree with me and not with Perez about my tweet on Ryan Dunn. He drank, he drove, 2 people died."

With his comments drawing mounting Internet furor (and even getting him temporarily kicked off Facebook!), Ebert took to his Chicago Sun-Times blog on Tuesday to address the controversy, clarify his statements, and to offer his condolences to the Dunn and Hartwell families. "I also regret that my tweet about the event was considered cruel. It was not intended as cruel. It was intended as true," Ebert writes. "I have no way of knowing if Ryan Dunn was drunk at the time of his death. What I knew before posting my tweet was that not long before his death, he posted a photo on Tumbler showing himself drinking with two friends."

That much is certainly true, though the photo -- which shows Dunn, Hartwell and another friend drinking beers at the Philadelphia bar Barnaby's of America -- has since been taken down. Reports on Dunn's condition before he left the bar differ: One source told TMZ that Dunn had three beers and three "girly shots" over a four hour period, and "was not too drunk to drive"; another source, however, said Dunn was "wasted." The manager of the bar agreed with the former assessment, telling CNN, "(Dunn) didn't seem to be intoxicated at the time he left. Ryan was not a hardcore drinker, at least not when he was here."

At the time of Ebert's controversy-inciting tweet, the West Goshen Police Department had also already released a statement saying that "speed may have been a contributing factor to the accident." Authorities have estimated that Dunn's Porsche 911 may have been traveling at speeds in excess of 100 m.p.h. when the automobile crashed through a guardrail, slammed into a tree and burst into flames, killing Dunn and passenger Zachary Hartwell (a stuntman and production assistant on Jackass 2).

In his post, Ebert goes on to apologize for the tweet, but defends the essence of what he was saying. "I don't know what happened in this case, and I was probably too quick to tweet. That was unseemly," he writes. "I do know that nobody has any business driving on a public highway at 110 mph, as some estimated -- or fast enough, anyway, to leave a highway and fly through 40 yards of trees before crashing. That is true in any event. It is especially true if the driver has had three shots and three beers. Two people were killed. What if the car had crashed into another car?"

Ebert closes out the post with a toned-down version of his initial tweet: "Friends don't let friends drink and drive."

Source: http://www.ivillage.com/roger-ebert-slammed-ryan-dunn-drunk-driving-tweet/1-a-359480

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