Shawne Merriman is awesome because he’s one of our fave Twitterers, like, ever–as you may notice, since he shows up practically weekly in our Twitter Faves.  Also, we hear he plays football.

And, possibly, he beats up his girlfriend? The girlfriend, by the way is Tila Tequila.  We have no evidence that she’s a pink hat, because we’ve never seen her at a sporting event, but let us explain that we hate her anyway.  Her MTV reality show? Ridiculous, and predicated on the idea that anyone’ll watch hot chicks making out with each other.  (Which, ok, usually true, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t annoy us.  Making out with another chick for attention is DEFINITELY a pink hat type move.  Like, the pink hat of partygoing.)

Ahem. We digress.

Merriman was arrested by the San Diego Sheriff’s Department on suspicion of assault.  Tequila (not her real name, but to each her own…) called and claimed he was trying to choke and restrain her.

So, another athlete/famous guy hurts his date?

Not so fast.

Merriman claims he was trying to stop her from driving, because she was drunk, and witnesses saw her drinking at a club that night and giving Merriman lapdances.  TMZ’s pictures seem like Merriman, on the other hand, is drinking good ol’ H2O.

Tequila, meanwhile, claims she doesn’t drink: her nickname’s ironic!  She tweeted that explanation yesterday….and now it’s gone.  In fact, all her tweets are now protected…and her website, while we’re at it, has her blogging about her multiple personalities.  A sample:

I am very high strung and suffer from multiple personalities. Jane. She’s crazy and she always wants to kill me. Tila…poor girl..she works so hard and always wants to make others happy…she deserves a break. I haven’t had boyfriend for so long. I always want one, but when there is one around i run. I’m too busy.

As far as we’re concerned, we don’t like to point fingers at reporters of domestic violence…it sets a terrible precedent, and whether or not Tila, Jane or whomever else showed up that day was drunk, Merriman’s a big strong guy who perhaps should have been more careful.  But this story’s weird to us, from the coaches and teammates who say Merriman would never do anything like this to Tila’s sudden social media absence (especially since the woman is a PRODUCT of social media: she was discovered on MySpace before she had her MTV show.)  To us, that’s the weirdest part.