RE: Meghan Mccain

cnn.com — Meghan McCain is breaking her silence following a wave of media attention over a picture she posted on Twitter Wednesday night.

The revealing picture of herself in a tank top, which left little to the twitterverse's imagination, immediately drew harsh criticism from other tweeters, prompting an upset McCain to declare of the social networking Web site, "What once was fun now just seems like a vessel for harassment."

I think it is fitting, given our discussions lately about the blurring of public and private, to discuss this weeks uproar over a somewhat revealing picture of John McCain's daughter that she posted on twitter. The picture, which I have chosen not to post here, shows McCain essentially falling out of a tanktop while reading an Andy Warhol biography. She took the photo of herself, and tweeted it out to the universe (to less than rave reviews).

Without thinking about McCain's claim that there is a double standard with regards to this sort of thing (probably is), there are still a number of issues here that pertain to our class discussions. McCain said that twitter has morphed from something fun to a vessel for harrassment. While I agree that twitter could potentially be both, I still can't understand her defense here. That it was a tasteful picture?

Meghan also has said that she was offended by the comments about her being skanky, or even worse... but I still can't imagine what the senator's daughter thought was going to happen once she tweeted this out in to the universe. I mean, they say no publicity is bad publicity but this certainly seems like a poor choice.

The point here is that, like McCain pointed out, these social networking sites can be either fun or a burden. What she doesn't seem to realize, however, is that the user is generally in control of these situations. Im sure that some of the responses to her picture could have been more tactful, but it seems to me like an outright stupid thing to do in the first place, so I don't appreciate hearing her play the victim. The bottom line is that someone of her age who grew up in this hyper-mediated generation, especially in a high-profile situation, knows exactly where the lines are and what the consequences are in the digital world. A classic example of a publicity stunt gone wrong.