What's worse than receiving pitches from consultants and social-media gurus offering "Marketing Lessons You Can Learn from the Egyptian Revolution"?

This tweet from the Kenneth Cole Twitter presence: "Millions are in uproar in #Cairo. Rumor is they heard our new spring collection is now available online at http://bit.ly/KCairo -KC"

That KC is supposed to indicate thoughts actually from Kenneth Cole himself--and not some keyboard-pounding intern. Whatever the case, the tweet immediately followings reads: "Re Egypt tweet: we weren't intending to make light of a serious situation. We understand the sensitivity of this historic moment -KC"

Is there a marketing lesson to be learned from this? Yes. Kenneth Cole and others in the media and marketing industries not only suffer from a lack of tact, they suffer from a lack of historical knowledge and the ability to grasp that the situation in Egypt could get a hell of lot uglier than it is even at this moment. In other words, just because you have an opinion on everything doesn't mean you should be sharing it.