Kutcher retreats from tweets

Ashton Kutcher -- whose 8.72 million followers have made him one of the most ubiquitous celebrities on Twitter -- continued to atone Thursday for an ill-advised and quickly retracted tweet in support of Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who was fired Wednesday as the university deals with a child sex-abuse scandal.

"Up until today, I have posted virtually every one of my tweets on my own, but clearly the platform has become too big to be managed by a single individual," Kutcher, 33, said in a lengthy blog post Thursday. After explaining that he'd initially assumed Paterno was fired "due to football related issues," he announced, "I'm going to turn the management of the feed over to my team at Katalyst as a secondary editorial measure . . . My sincere apologies to anyone who I offended. It was a mistake that will not happen again."

Kutcher, who with his wife, Demi Moore, had founded The Demi and Ashton Foundation in 2010 to help combat child sex slavery, had tweeted Wednesday, "How do you fire Jo Pa?" Then, referring to his home state University of Iowa football team, Kutcher added, "s a hawkeye fan, I find it in poor taste."

Kutcher removed that tweet about 30 minutes later, after receiving what he called "a hailstorm of responses calling me an 'idiot' and several other expletives." And he explained that when he first tweeted, he "didn't have full story."