Lucy Caldwell has the news that Caroline Giuliani's Facebook profile "designates her political views as "liberal" and—until this morning—proclaimed her membership in the Facebook group 'Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack).' According to her profile, she withdrew from the Obama group at 6 a.m. Monday, after Slate sent her an inquiry about it."
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The "She's Your Daughter" Primary
06 Aug 2007 01:24 pm
Comments (62)
That makes me feel icky... I mean it sucks that she has that thrown out there that way. I understand that she's putting the info on the web, but I still feel bad for her.
As I said elsewhere, I'm sure has enough troubles. Why exactly does she need to be part of any of this?
This is immensely funny.
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Y'know, if Giuliani is nominatable, (which I assume he's not), Newt ought to run. If folks with utterly unelectable private lives are suddenly nominatable, why shouldn't Newt go for the prize?
This is a good example of why the children of famous people shouldn't be using facebook. You know that if there's anything that could be construed as untoward will be used against Famous Parent. There is also a broader and fairly obvious observation to be made about the decline of privacy in the age of the Internet, i.e. everything is transparent, blah, blah, blah. The other point (in response to Bergman) to make is that in spite of the fact that everyone says this stuff shouldn't matter, don't pick on the politician's poor kids, it is clear that of course it matters. She doesn't have to be part of any of this, but she is going to, and there's nothing to be done. The only way for politicians' kids to escape scrutiny is to be really young (like the Obama girls).
"That makes me feel icky... I mean it sucks that she has that thrown out there that way. I understand that she's putting the info on the web, but I still feel bad for her."
The story here is not the sucker's game of feeling sorry for the poor little rich girl.
The story here is that Giuliani's kids hate him so much that he can't even manage the bare minimum of communicating the basics of famous person PR common sense.
That's why it's funny. When your family hates you...
so, who isn't an Obama Girl these days?
It seems this reporter has quite a bad reputation as a totally unscrupulous and sensationalist journalist.
I can sympathize with Caroline. On occasion I've dated two women at the same time. When confronted with my membership in "The #2 Girlfriend Fan Club" I've usually quickly withdrawn in the interest of continued sex and a roof over my head.
Actually, I found the most interesting thing about her profile to be her interest in random play...
She seems cute. And she'll be 18 soon. But goddammit, those Giuliani genes. Her father's a revolting monster.
Jeezus I'm creepy.
It seems this reporter has quite a bad reputation as a totally unscrupulous and sensationalist journalist.
What? She's an intern at the Atlantic.
Petey,
You sound like one of those fifty-something-year-old, never-married men -- the kind who, in pre-Internet days, would spend all their free time on ham radios.
Love, and family relationships, are complicated. Hate isn't the opposite of love -- indifference is. Plenty of children going through extended adolescence "hate" their parents in childish, rebellious sorts of ways. This isn't necessarily a reflection on the character of the parents.
"Love, and family relationships, are complicated. Hate isn't the opposite of love -- indifference is. Plenty of children going through extended adolescence "hate" their parents in childish, rebellious sorts of ways. This isn't necessarily a reflection on the character of the parents."
Methinks you haven't followed all the details of Rudy Giuliani's private life. Dude's got a 37 ring personal circus of caddishness and disfunction.
He really does make Newt Gingrich seem viable.
Okay but Petey why does his estranged daughter have to deal with the press? She's seventeen. She didn't choose any of this.
Breaking News:
After learning of Judith Giuliani's history of performing surgical marketing demonstration on live dogs, Caroline's golden retriever has come out as an Edwards supporter.
It seems this reporter has quite a bad reputation as a totally unscrupulous and sensationalist journalist.
What? She's an intern at the Atlantic.
Matt, why do you think working at the Atlantic means you have scruples or any sense of honesty / decency?
Uh oh! This might land her in Pennypacker...
I can't believe I missed Matt's morning reference to one of Marty's Minions over at The New Racists. I guess I'll have to save my Throbert McGee joke for later. shucks.
But Jesus knows she belongs in Canaday...
I agree that it's not cool to harass the poor girl just because she doesn't want her father to be President. Leave her out of this.
Then again, we live in a world where John McCain can crack a joke about Chelsea's looks and everyone laughs, so Giuliani's daughter truthfully doesn't have it all that bad.
petey, i don't have much to say about giuliani's daughter (of course it's funny that she would support obama!), but actually, as i've noted before, i think newt has a real shot at this. he is, for instance, the only non-ron paul who actually eschews ignorant cant on every issue.
i think he's playing his cards pretty well, setting himself up as an "independent" voice within the gop (sort of a renewed "straight talk" express) if no one really emerges....
"Methinks you haven't followed all the details of Rudy Giuliani's private life..."
I have, and it doesn't make me condemn Rudy as a person. It is, however, part of the reason why I will be voting for Romney in the primary. Romney's family life -- one wife, 3-out-5 kids Eagle Scouts, etc. -- would frustrate the hell out of any scandal-seeking journalist.
Fred: Hate isn't the opposite of love -- indifference is.
Fear is the opposite of love. I don't think that the opposite of the strongest positive feeling one can feel is apathy. You want the object of your love to be a part of your life, and the feeling of love can make you happy even when the object is far away and only in your mind. Fear instills the opposite. You don't want to be near what you fear, and fear can be damaging psychologically even when what you fear is far away and not directly affecting you at all. (Of course it's possible to feel both love and fear toward one person/thing at the same time. We aren't machines.)
The goal of terrorists is to instill terror, which is just a stronger, more acute form of fear.
Romney's family life -- one wife, 3-out-5 kids Eagle Scouts, etc. -- would frustrate the hell out of any scandal-seeking journalist.
Dog abuse.
Romney's family life -- one wife, 3-out-5 kids Eagle Scouts, etc. -- would frustrate the hell out of any scandal-seeking journalist.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Arthur Gary Bishop went from being a honor student, Eagle Scout and teenage missionary to an obsessed pedophile and child killer that he later attributed to pornography that he was to exposed to while growing up.
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WHITMAN, CHARLES JOSEPH (1941-1966). Charles Joseph Whitman, tower sniper, was born in Lake Worth, Florida, on June 24, 1941, the oldest of three sons of Margaret and Charles A. Whitman, Jr. He attended Sacred Heart grade and junior high schools, was an Eagle Scout at twelve.
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Yes, those Eagle Scouts are dependably safe and upright.
The Slate writer, Lucy Caldwell, has written some very silly and much criticized articles for the Crimson. Go here and click on Opinion, then read through some of her articles.
Her decision to "out" Giuliani's daughter is not surprising. Is it news? Yeah, kinda. Could Caldwell have refrained from embarrassing a fellow Harvard student through a national platform? Of course.
"Her decision to "out" Giuliani's daughter is not surprising. Is it news? Yeah, kinda. Could Caldwell have refrained from embarrassing a fellow Harvard student through a national platform? Of course."
nbt has just officially won 'wanker of the day' honors.
Congratulations. Remember to thank the academy in your speech.
"Romney's family life -- one wife, 3-out-5 kids Eagle Scouts"
5 pro-war sons and none ever volunteered for this most heroic defense of this great nation, including Mitty.
Truly, a conservative in the Reagan mold.
The Slate writer, Lucy Caldwell, has written some very silly and much criticized articles for the Crimson. Go here and click on Opinion, then read through some of her articles.
Gasp! She wrote articles that got criticized? This is a great lede:
Lena Chen ’09 has a lot of sex. She gives a lot of blowjobs, and all evidence suggests that her technique is quite good. Chen, who is also a Crimson editor, enjoys snapping provocative photos of herself in tiny t-shirts sporting too-tussled JBF hair. Her favorite type of underwear is boyshorts. Her most recent fling, whom she claims she had moaning within seconds of unbuttoning his jeans, told her she had "a great ass." Also, she’s depressed.
I know all of this because, shamefully, I read her erotic blog Sex And The Ivy with some regularity. Most of its contents I find vile, yet this blog pulls me in. Late nights between writing papers and studying for midterms, I find myself clicking on the link as I huddle sleepily over my carrel.
Unfortunately, I don't know what "JBF hair" is.
Just been...
Truly, a conservative in the Reagan mold.
My sentiments exactly. Before anyone dives too deeply into the muck, however, I seem to recall that this line of attack didn't prove all that productive in Reagan's case.
MY writes: "I know all of this because, shamefully, I read her erotic blog Sex And The Ivy with some regularity. Most of its contents I find vile, yet this blog pulls me in. Late nights between writing papers and studying for midterms, I find myself clicking on the link as I huddle sleepily over my carrel."
Either MY has told us too much about himself or he misplaced his html tags.
Oh I thought it was Just Butt-F...
Man, my mind's in the gutter today.
That said, why MY is cozy to any Crimson writer is beyond me. Back in his days helming the Mad-Ship Independent, we used to swarm across the gangplanks and slice ope those heathen scum from nape to navel!
Ahh, those were the days, when the girls were girls and the boys were also girls, depending upon how long we were out to sea...
Yarr, Matt, all I can say is Yarr!
Matt, if she's interning at the Atlantic, help make sure her head is screwed on straight, because judging by her Crimson output she has the potential to become the worst kind of MSMer.
Just been...
Awesome. Kids these days....
Jesus, can you imagine the range of emotions Lisa Chen's parents must have had over the years? All those proud moments watching her bring home "A"s, listening to her play Bach at the piano recitals... then the day that seemed to put the cherry on the sundae, when the fat envelope came in the mail from Harvard. Harvard!-- Our little Lisa!
Then she outs herself as a slut and exhibitionist. Oh wells. The future isn't necessarily bleak for her though. She could end up being the next Asia Carerra.
visible sluts are the worst. discreet sluts are better, and more sustainable.
You know you don't have to circle the wagons for all of your overprivileged Harvard friends. Like yourself, they have the advantage of being born into wealth, and never having to work for anything in their life.
As a former Middle Class Harvard Student I must say, fuck the Soc's!
I can't say I have a high opinion of a student journalist who uses her access to an underage girl's web profile to score herself a piece on a well-read internet magazine.
Look, if Giuliani's kids want to speak up, that's their right. But it's just not fair to start picking at them looking for evidence of estrangement with their father. For their own sake, I hope they don't go public. There's a lot easier ways to indicate Giuliani's horrible character than making a media circus around a badly broken family. He's left a lot of hurt and angry people in his wake.
Yeah, that's a pretty reprehensible article that Matt linked to.
As usual with these sorts of things, the unabashed conservative (Fred, just above) gets the barely subterranean point - Lena is a dirty slut who deserves to be punished.
I was just reading David Halperin's brilliant Saint Foucault today, and he nails this type of writing perfectly in his response to Foucault's obituaries and biographies:
When it comes to Foucault, and perhaps to gay issues more generally, the difference between liberals and reactionaries - between the New York Review of Books and the National Review - is not a difference of politics so much as it is one of strategy.
To be clear, the article on Li'l Guiliani is, to me, not particularly bad, but the article on Lena Chen is the worst sort of slut-shaming - that is, the sort that wears its liberal knowingness as a shroud to cover its basic hate.
It's also worth noting that she deliberately altered her last name on Facebook to prevent this from happening. (See the article.) Here we have a seventeen-year-old girl deliberately trying to protect her privacy. Sure, the careful thing to do would be not to join Facebook. But honestly, Slate should be the ones with a sense of discretion here, not some naive pre-frosh.
I agree that this sucks for the kids. But just wait until the ads right before the first round of primaries: "What kind of a person is Rudy Giuliani? His son won't campaign with him, and his daughter endorsed Barack Hussein Obama. Wouldn't you rather have a candidate who who shares your family values? I'm Newt Gingrich, and I approve this message."
Quote from commenter above: "The only way for politicians' kids to escape scrutiny is to be really young (like the Obama girls)."
Not quite. By any measure this is creepy.
"I agree that this sucks for the kids."
Won't somebody please think of the children of celebrities?
Petey, would you care to actually address my comment, instead of calling me a wanker?
is my new handle...
"As usual with these sorts of things, the unabashed conservative (Fred, just above) gets the barely subterranean point - Lena is a dirty slut who deserves to be punished."
Ah, stop projecting. Lena may be a dirty slut but that doesn't mean she "deserves to be punished". What would the world be without dirty sluts? A much more boring place.
And the reality is she won't be punished. She may end up making a profitable career using her sexuality, as Asia Carerra did; or, more likely, in ten years she will be a stay-at-home mom on the Upper West Side, married to a corporate lawyer who has never heard of her old sex blog.
Fred -
I could quibble, but more my point was that Caldwell's article, which discusses in somber, reflective tones how Chen has ruined her future job prospects by being such a dirty, dirty slut, was fantasizing her punishment.
Such outings (Chen) are symbolic rape, in my view. The prude is jealous and seeks to tear down the liberated "slut," vindicating her own cold, semi-voluntary chastity in the eyes of a patriarchy that pays lip service to the puritanical to maintain our own lockstep-misogyny and preserve its paternalistic moral high ground.
Thus: sexually liberated women= sluts. Sexually inhibited women= cold prudes. The healthy sexual woman has no room to breathe between these two suffocating extremes, the Asia Carrera and the Hillary CLInton. The Right Wingers do this to the Muslim world as well. Friends don't let friends hold polarizing views- on foreign policy OR female sexuality. Subjectivity is not weakness, it is a necessary acknowledgment of human agency and mutability.
Or something.
JBF, you need to do a little homework. Chen blogged under her own name. She was not outed. And while the Crimson article does have a handwringing quality to it, it's hardly a "symbolic rape." It's just a mindless article by a student journalist destined to be the star of the NYT Styles section. Hell, I don't like this Crimson reporter, but I think you've gone off the deep end here.
My suggestion, meant in only the most friendly and sex-positive way, is that maybe your handle is a major misnomer and you just need to get laid.
It stands for "just been fwned by the rakishly handsome philly."
But yeah, I intentionally did not look into the Chen story 'cuz a) I don't care and b)i wanted to make my point regardless of the facts. I was thinking about Wingers' tendency to hypocritically assail sexually promiscuous women in between their page boy AIM sessions and diaper-clad visits to the hooker. Sorry for going off the reservation, but I assure you, my sex life is vexing for other reasons; namely, all deez ho_s up on my jock!!!!!! LOLZ
Look, someone at Harvard tipped off Lucy Caldwell. If she wants to be taken seriously, and not regarded as a silly student journalist trying to make a name for herself in the world of Serious Tabloidism, then she chooses to spike it.
Here we have a seventeen-year-old girl deliberately trying to protect her privacy. Sure, the careful thing to do would be not to join Facebook.
Joining Facebook already shows a degree of care. It's not MySpace or a blog that gets sucked into the Google indices.
Yeah, but you're getting ZUCKED into the ZUCKERBERG indices, which is much much worse.
I don't think it's out of bounds to point out that one of Giuliani's daughters not only is supporting another presidential candidate, but doing so publicly. She put the information out there for people to see. If it's privacy you're after, you don't spill the beans on the internet. And, as best I can tell, it's really not a big deal-so Guiliani's daughter doesn't want to put another warmongering creep in the Oval Office-good for her. The last time I checked, she was entitled to the free expression of her own opinion, regardless of who she might be related to.
In petey's world, if you're the child of someone he doesn't like, then that makes you a legitimate target of ridicule.
I don't see why candidates' or celebrities' children should be held to a standard of being aware of "basic rules of PR". That is, unless they've made PR their responsibility by being public themselves.
But putting some information on the Internet isn't "being public" in this sense. It's the sort of thing people do these days, especially young people. Just because anyone in the world can find out this information doesn't make it world-famous. After all, there's all sorts of private things in the offline world that anyone can legally get access to, if they wish.
As usual, I have two things to say about these sorts of privacy concerns in the Internet age.
First, the extreme privacy of urban anonymity in the urban, industrialized age is an aberration that too many people have taken for granted as both a right and as normal and good. It's none of those things. People in communities normally do and should know personal things about each other. That we are no longer invisible in a sea of anonymity is a good thing.
Second, the way that traditional communities who do have extensive personal knowledge of its members have dealt with these problems has been via the social etiquette mechanisms of willful ignorance and discretion. Even we urban anonymous folks do this in our private lives when we refuse to read the mail or diaries of our partners of families. Just because you can know something doesn't mean you should know something.
Eventually we'll learn not to extensively research people we know or have heard of on Google without good reason. Eventually we'll learn that just because something is available on the Internet doesn't mean that it is or should be public knowledge.
Just so in the case of Caroline Giuliani. Many children don't share their parents' politics. It doesn't represent a dysfunctional family. Nor is it true in Caroline's extreme case. Perhaps most children of Presidential candidates who don't share their parent's politics end up putting their personal interest and their parent's interests before the greater good. It seems that Caroline has stronger civic values than this. If anything, that says something positive about her father rather than negative.
Fair enough, JBF. And pseudonymous in nc, I agree that she took some measures (changing her name, picking the comparatively more secure Facebook over other sites), but at the end of the day, Gordon Lightfoot is right: if you put something on the internet and a stranger can legally read it, it's not really private.
Just a note, though: if she were more savvy, she would have changed her Facebook settings to only allow friends to view her profile, she would have fully changed her last name (or just used an initial), AND she would have deleted "Caroline Giuliani has left the group '1 Mil 4 Obama" from her news feed!
But her lack of internet smarts doesn't make it her fault. She's seventeen. And Slate should fucking get a life.
PS. I don't mean to make this all about "poor little rich girl." I mean, odds are that she's thrilled that she's pissing off Daddy big time. But it's a slippery slope to start reading the Facebook profiles of underage kids and publicizing their contents.
You know, her real mistake was responding to the Slate query by altering her profile. If she had simply done nothing, they would have had even less to write about.
This has been the most ridiculous story of the past week or so. If you've ever used facebook you know that people join different groups like its going out of style. It usually has nothing to do with what you actually believe/support/do, it's just what people do. It requires absolutely no effort or commitment other than clicking "join this group."
And god knows the One Million Strong for Obama group has just become trendy to join. I can't tell you how many invitations I've gotten from friends to join that group - that one and the group saying we'd all turn off our lights to save the earth or something. I declined both groups.
When you start trawling people's facebook groups to see what groups they belong to, it's time to step back and realize you need a hobby. Badly.
Comments closed August 20, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
She's like Leia, but then that would make Andrew Luke... yeah, even GWB keeps a rein on those blitzed bimbo Bush twins-- Rudy has completely lost his kids, but I'm sure he'll make an absolutely FABBULOUS prez.
;)
Posted by Gregorio | August 6, 2007 1:32 PM