As McCain campaigns for the presidency, an increasingly visible member of his family has been his daughter Meghan. The 23-year-old has been blogging about life on the trail and gaining attention — both positive and negative.
At her blog, Mccainblogette.com, Meghan posts her musings on fashion and family life rather than her father’s positions on Iraq or subprime mortgages. Her updated iTunes playlists are a regular feature along with photos and videos produced by two fellow “blogettes.”
Readers seem to appreciate her non-political approach. “This blog makes my day. All the wonderful videos and pictures you put up really give a more personal insight to your family,” Nick from North Carolina comments in a typical installment of the blog’s “viewer mail” posts.
But does she have any fans in the media?
“I don’t understand why in this industry of politics, I am an airhead,” she says in a Washington Post profile of her, published today. “I’m so sick of being called dumb because I like, you know, movies and music and fashion.”
The same Post story seems to go out of its way to paint her as an Elle Woods type.
Are all the “ums,” “likes” and “you knows” attributed to her and her colleagues really necessary when standard journalism practice is to remove such extraneous language? I count 16 total in the Post piece. Or how about the three mentions of her giggles? If the main focus of the piece is the role her blog is playing in the campaign — and the campaign’s role in her blog — why is it in the Style section? (The Los Angeles Times ran a “like”-free front-page profile last month.)
But perhaps Meghan and the McCain campaign are in on the joke. The uberpositive Meghan could be valuable taking away attention from potentially negative stories about her father, and Meghan perpetuating the idea of “my dad’s so cool, he loves my blog” certainly serves as a counterbalance to the image of him, at 71, appearing less-than-hip to younger voters.
A recent video post from Meghan McCain’s blog:
