Another social networking embarrassment for a presidential candidate: Rudy Giuliani’s 17-year-old daughter Caroline supports Barack Obama for president over her father. Until this morning she was a member of the One Million Strong For Obama Facebook group, and lists her political views as “liberal.” Caroline removed herself from the group after Slate emailed her about it, but it remained in her newsfeed.
This is certainly not the first time social networks have been a thorn for political candidates. In March, Senator John McCain’s MySpace profile was hacked to suggest he was in favor of gay marriage. The incident was later picked up by the Daily Show.
I don’t think this means anything about anything. Families are complex and made up of individuals. She has her own opinions — good for her. No real news here.
right. total coincidence that she removed herself from the group today too. Daily Show definitely won’t mention this.
I agree. Non-story. What 17 year old daughter ever listens to her parents?
Don’t misunderstand me; it will be news and her removal does make it look bad. My point is that it should not be news. It should be ok for kids and their parents to have different political views.
Of course in a perfect world I would never see Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan gracing another magazine cover. Good luck, eh?
Phil - I mostly agree. The interesting angle for me is that social networks are way more public than most users realize, leading to these kinds of stories. I don’t know if you saw the story linked below, but it’s another example of this kind of thing.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007.....-your-job/
Seems social network makes democracy more democratic. I think the society should be getting used to it. After it’s all about individualism, right.
Hey, at least now we know that if he gets elected, we’ll have a cute “first daughter” in the White House
Spoiled kids from rich Ivy League prep school in Ivy League school adds herself as Obama lover on Facebook. Film at 11.
She may have just been surprised it was news and dropped it on her own out of loyalty to her Dad, that would be my first guess if it happened after she was emailed by Slate. I don’t think it’s an embarrassment to Rudy at all, and I think if asked about it he can turn it positive by just supporting her and letting her have her own opinion. He can have a humanizing chuckle about it, most any parent can relate to it. I guess Jon Stewart can probably take a swipe at it, but it’s nada politically in my opinion.
It is interesting Internet news though, this campaign is going to have a lot of unforeseen little things like this.
TechCrunch “profiles the companies, products and events that are defining and transforming the new web” .. or writes about anything with the word “facebook” in it?
Andre- you’re right she kind of is. Maybe a Thompson/Giuliani or vice versa ticket to really bring the heat. She’ll be 18 by then so it’ll be more appropriate during the actual heavy campaign season.
I like how her last name is blurred out in the screen shot . . .
Easy to turn positive - Rudy just needs to say that he raised his kids in an open-minded, democratic environment where each is entitled to their own opinion, independent of peers & parents, in the true American spirit of freedom, blah blah blah.
A pity that she didn’t keep it, it would have made a stronger statement for her father than removing it. I guess some media consultants will suggest just that…
I’m not sure I would call what Mike Davidson did to McCain’s MySpace page “hacking” … McCain was hot linking images and Davidson played a (brilliant) little prank.
But you already know that… TC was the first to report on it, if I remember correctly.
Not a big deal. If I ever ran for office, I am sure quite a few of my relatives would vote for someone else. Too bad we can’t have the family all fall into line like we need them to.
Interesting, how it was pulled down… That is the only thing that makes it newsworthy.
A couple interesting (and possibly disturbing) questions here.
For one, is information about a minor fair game simply because it’s semi-publicly available on Facebook? - the Slate writer had access to Caroline’s Harvard group because she went to Harvard.
Also, does membership in a Facebook group constitute an endorsement?
What a sleezy story by Slate. A Harvard “reporter” who had access to Caroline’s profile contacted her and wrote a national story about her relationship with her father.
The girl is 17. Leave her alone.
TechCrunch is going down the shitter. I thought Scoble was the only insane Facebook fanboy, but now TechCrunch has joined the crowd.
1. There is nothing embarrassing about this at all. The girl went to Trinity for God’s sake. If you knew the slightest thing about the Upper East and Upper West Sides of Manhattan, you’d know that the elite send their kids to schools like Trinity, Horace Mann, Dalton, etc. and while certain schools have a reputation for being more liberal than others, for the most part, these kids are very open minded. Giuliani has nothing to lose here.
2. What if his daughter is playing some real politik (yes that’s a real world, look it up and learn something)? She can root for Obama knowing that he’s a weaker candidate than Clinton so that her dad may have a better shot at President were he to win the Republican nomination? This underlies the argument between open and closed primaries. In an open primary, people registered for one party can go and vote for the weakest member of the other party in order to sabotage the results.
3. Get outside of Silicon Valley every now and then and realize the world does not revolve around Facebook.
Seems to me like only people who aren’t parents would find this to be a big deal…or even interesting.
SHOCK: Teenage girl opposes parent’s viewpoint.
SHOCK2: Ivy League newbie leans liberal
What’s next…she gets out of school, has a real job for 5 years, becomes a parent and starts to move more and more conservative until death? Unheard of.
dudes — she supports someone other than her own dad for president — that’s some pretty f-ed up shite. she must really hate pops if she’s willing to deny herself the white house perks. she’ll never have to pay for those $400 bottles of crystal in the VIP again. giuliani must be one screwed-up dad…
It was wrong of Slate to publish this (I don’t care that some intern from the Crimson wrote the story), and wrong for you to republish, Michael. The girl’s a minor and not a public figure. Period. She didn’t do anything to attract attention; she behaved like a typical 17 year old would. Blaming her for not using Facebook’s privacy settings is a weak defense.
Has TechCrunch become such a political sell-out that they are stirring (what they think is) a bees’ nest? Or is there really no news out there worth reporting and thus we’re stuck reading this crap?
Does anyone think this is news? How about if you start covering Jessica Simpson or some one else, equally useless to society?
If TechCrunch is seriously going to start covering these pointless tangent stories that apply only to (read here “human, just like you and me”) celebrities, then it looks like I’ll be looking for good tech news elsewhere. ( wikio, lifehacker, slashdot, Ars Technica, etc… )
Sorry for the rant session but this is not news to the community / target market this site is aimed at quenching. If I wanted this crap, I’d read drudgereport.
“does membership in a Facebook group constitute an endorsement?”
When the group is called ‘One Million Strong for Obama’ then yes, I’d say so.
Giuliani is a fascist and has no family values. Jerk.
@WTF
Dude– she’s 17. She joined a group on facebook. Maybe she was checking it out to give her Dad some helpful hints? Or maybe she wants to hear what other candidates have to say so that she’s not excluded from conversations at her new school because of who her father is? It’s not like she was on the campaign trail here.
I can tell you I am a member of Barack’s website and I have ZERO intention of voting for him. Does that make me a Barack supporter?
—-Who cares??—-
Doesn’t anyone else get the notion of “guilt by association”?
Just because she joined a group doesn’t necessarily mean she supports it. You can join groups just to keep tabs and find out what they are about. Now, she may very well support him, but since she hasn’t declared it publicly this means nothing.
“What a sleezy story by Slate. A Harvard “reporter” who had access to Caroline’s profile contacted her and wrote a national story about her relationship with her father.
The girl is 17. Leave her alone.”
Amen to this! She’s a child and Slate just opened her and her photo up to a world of sickos….way to go!
I think there is something bigger here most are missing. She is looking for random play and what ever she can get.
She’s too young to be a Republican. All that liberal philosophy that sounds so good when you’re 20 ends up looking ridiculous and unworkable when you’re 40. After you have succeeded on your own, you look back and think “wow, I’m a conservative. How did that happen?”
i think this is hilarious. even funnier is everyone’s befuddlement as to why techcrunch would ever mention something like this.
nodenetni, you get the prize for best comment of the week, and its only monday.
From what I recall, McCain’s Myspace profile was not “hacked” - he (or his team) used a Myspace theme taken from someone else, and used images loaded directly from the original author’s server — so the author simply replaced them with images suggesting McCain supported gay marriage (particularly hot lesbian action, if memory serves).
Hardly “hacking”. But I apologise if I am mistaken.
@andy
dude — you seem like a smart guy. 17 or not, if you’re dad was running for prez, don’t you think you’d be a little more careful? whether intentional or not, whether supporting Obama or not, this is going to be an embarrassment for dear old dad. that’s all i’m saying at the end of the day.
MarkB is correct,
McCain’s profile was not hacked whatsoever.
if Facebook were around back in the day, her dad’s would say:
Sex: Male
Interested in: Females, except when I’m dressed in drag
Relationship status: Who cares, I’m willing to cheat
Looking for: A friend with similar characteristics to suggest as head of Homeland Security, a chance the first clinically insane President of America, Cybersex with Rupert Murdoch
I agree with MarkB (31) and Josh Catone (14) that McCain’s Myspace profile was not hacked. In Mike’s layout tutorial for Myspace, I believe that he had said outright to create your own images and not link to his server, but they went ahead and did it anyways. Last time I checked, changing images on your own server isn’t hacking.
Irrelevant. Hilarious, but irrelevant.
The real question here is why does she have “Whatever I can get” under “Looking for”… I can’t imagine it looks good for Giuliani to have his daughter soliciting herself so desperately.
lol - her father will disown her for voting for the opponent
If you hang something out on the Internet … for public consumption … then you and your comments are fair game.
This is newsworthy and worthwhile for TC to mention because it smacks of what Web 2.0 is all about, is is not? Social commentary!?!?! Too bad so many people missed that fact. T
Rudy’s daughter made a public statement and that’s pretty telling. A child rebelling against her parent is nothing new and it’s certainly not newsworthy in and of itself. Factor in the part that the kid’s dad is running for president and now you have something that *is* newsworthy.
From the comments on Slate…
“While she didn’t lock her profile entirely, like all Facebook accounts, Caroline’s profile was intended to be visible to members. Further, she limited it to people within her network. Yes, you as one of the 42,000 people affiliated with Harvard or Trinity were able to see it, but that doesn’t mean that you had permission to publish it for the general public’s viewing on Slate. ”
Is this a violation of Facebook’s ToS?
That’s because her father is a flip flopping, philandering, dickhead. He couldn’t lead a thirsty man to water.
I’ve said it before… I’ll say it again… we get exactly what we ask for from our candidates and media. People cry and moan and complain that we aren’t ‘tackling the important issues’, or ‘discussing real problems’. But then stories like this come out, and we lap it all up.
I don’t understand how this is newsworthy. How am I, the reader of the story, better informed by this? How does it help me better understand the world? How does it help me vote?
It would be different if the reporter did a real story about Giuliani’s relationship with his children… I certainly can understand how this might be an issue. But that would take some effort to write, and it might actually take some effort to read and understand.
I suspect the relationship is much more complex than the Mini-Feed on Facebook is able to communicate.
Arrington, you’re an idiot.
I don’t know who said it above, but Sweet Lord I could use a ‘Facebook News’ moratorium. I guess it’s in my own hands for reading. It’s easy to get myopic about those places, I just don’t think this is much of anything.
Even Rudy’s kids hate him. Not an overstatement. Have we ever had a modern day President that was estranged from his children? If he can’t handle his own kids how’s he supposed to run the country?
Slate should be ashamed of itself for starting this whole thing and TechCrunch should be ashamed of itself for propagating it. So should Daily Show.
You’re invading the privacy of a minor for absolutely no reason.
While it’s possible that the fact that the daughter supports Obama is newsworth in the context of Giuliani’s campaign, there’s no reason to plaster her Facebook profile all over the web. She’s not a public figure.
i’d hit it
This whole store is kind of ridiculous. I mean, what 17 year old girl does agree with her father’s politics? If anything, it shows the maturity level it takes to be an Obama fan. The truth is, every time Obama takes a jab at Hilary he comes off looking like a 17 year old so I could see why they love him.
That said, I do have to agree with those who say that it’s pretty low to publish the Facebook musings of a minor. People should leave kids out of politics all together and the fact that Slate decided to violate this girls privacy to score a cheap shot against her father shows just how much of a political rag that site has become.
I’m not sure I like this new white background for metafilter, I’m used to the blue…wait…oh this is techcrunch. Sorry.
@tom-
your slanted, political ethos are showing through a bit too strong here.
to assume that obama is the only politician taking “jabs” at opponents is quite juvenile in itself.
you don’t like obama, you don’t like slate, so you crafted some half assed, wanna be witty remark that just doesn’t pan out. i’ll give you one more try, but that is all.