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Why did Delaware Gov. Jack Markell tweet a photo of an Estonian model?

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell was at Warner Elementary School in Wilmington this morning to announce a new initiative that aims to support the state's more disadvantaged students. But you'd never know that by the tweet he sent out about the event earlier today.

Delaware Gov. Jack Markell was at Warner Elementary School in Wilmington Thursday morning to announce a new initiative that aims to support the state's disadvantaged students. But you'd never know that by the tweet he sent out about the event earlier in the day:

That, ladies and gentlemen, is a photo of Darja, aka Precious Little, an Estonian model and avid Instagram user under the handle "PreciousLittleModel" — the account where the photo originated. Darja initially posted the photo in December 2010, and since then it somehow got onto our timelines.

That, of course, doesn't explain how it got attached to the tweet in the first place. Apparently, we can chalk it up to a case of mistaken linking. As a spokesperson for Markell told Delaware Online:

A spokeswoman for Markell says the photo link was mistakenly altered before the tweet was sent, resulting in an accidental linking to the racy photo. "The lessons here are not to compose tweets too quickly and there is a lot of odd stuff on the internet," spokeswoman Kelly Bachman said in a written statement. "We just wish the accidental link had been a cat video."

Precious Little, for her part, has since weighed in on the incident, saying that the photo comes from a photoshoot "years ago," and that she regrets the Markell account's error:

Markell's account has since deleted the offending (?) tweet and offered an apology to anyone who was somehow bothered by "inadvertantly" (a Delawarian spelling?) seeing the face of an Estonian model. Yes, it was was sort of suggestive, but come on:

Additionally, the correct photo has been posted for the Warner Elementary School event. Perhaps the two photos had similar names? Well, probably not:

On second thought, maybe he should have just stuck with the original.

[Phillymag]