Online Media Cultist

During Sunday’s Republican presidential debate, Rudy Giuliani brought the biggest laugh of the night in answering a question about a defining mistake. “To have a description of my mistakes in 30 seconds?” he said, shaking his head. He added that he could only properly confess his mistakes to moderator George Stephanopoulos’ father, a priest.

Perhaps one of Rudy’s lesser life mistakes was not getting his 17-year-old daughter Caroline on board with his campaign. In fact, Caroline’s Facebook profile caused quite a stir this week when it was discovered that she listed her political views as “liberal” and proclaimed membership in the “Barack Obama (One Million Strong for Barack)” group. The profile, which is viewable by people who attend Harvard, where Caroline is headed, and the Trinity School in Manhattan, has since ended its affiliation with the Obama group.

Interestingly, Caroline uses a slight variation on her last name on her Facebook profile. However, that coupled with the fact that the profile was semi-public did not prevent the story from leaking.

Aside from shining some light on a major presidential candidate’s inner family dynamics, this story displays how the Internet and social networking sites are pulling control away from politicians, celebrities, and public figures over their image and public relations.

ParisLemon sums up this sentiment well, writing: “Yes, Facebook is indeed awesome. It is only here that we could see that Rudy Giuliani’s own daughter apparently doesn’t even think he’d be the best man to run the country - she’s supporting Barack Obama.”

Andy Beal thinks that this story may cost Rudy a few votes “a year from now.” I disagree. If Republican primary voters can get past Rudy’s multiple marriages, I doubt that his daughter’s political disloyalty will help to sway voters. However, it may help build an overall case that Rudy isn’t the traditional Republican savior that conservative primary voters are looking for.

The New York Times notes that Obama is besting Giuliani in the overall social networking game, with 500 Facebook groups devoted to Obama (”One Million Strong for Barack” has over 300,000 members). Obama’s MySpace profile has 160,000 friends as compared to 7,000 and change for Rudy. And on Facebook, the Giuliani campaign has yet to set up a presence.

techPresident has the best advice for both Caroline Giuliani and the youth population set worldwide when it comes to dealing with the Internets:

Hey kids, guess what! Put something online, and it might just be a little public.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 9:51 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Tags: barack obama, facebook, politics, rudy giuliani, social networking