As a parent of a high school classmate of Caroline's and a former member of the Harvard Crimson, words cannot express how appalling I find this "article" to be. What are you thinking, Slate? Do you really think a 17-year old girl is fair game to be used for a quick, cheap headline? Just because she's the daughter of a politician -- a teenager who you already know has a deeply troubled relationship with her father?

She is a kid, not a public figure, regardless of the technical legal status of the information posted on Facebook. That may matter to your lawyers but not to ordinary people. Do you not care about her as a human being at all? Is there no common decency left anywhere? Even if the tidbit that she joined the Obama group was worth reporting, what possible justification can there be for showing her entire profile? It's prurient and malicious and you should be deeply, deeply ashamed of yourselves. You are just glorified stalkers, the kind of people we are told to warn our kids against. Instead of sexual abuse, you have engaged in psychological abuse of a minor.

Where does this sort of evil end? How would you like it if someone did a little digging on Facebook and started publishing embarrassing facts or photos about your kids that they found there? Wouldn't that be equally justified, now that you've crossed this line? Or is the lesson your readers should take that you don't have kids and don't have the faintest concern about what you are doing on a human level, it's all just a game to you? Because for most of us, we are human beings first, family members second, political animals fifth or tenth or increasingly not at all.

As for the author, she should be shunned for all eternity. In my day, we never, never ratted out a schoolmate. Ask your own David Edelstein about Caroline K. and JFK Jr. If he is not disgusted by this and doesn't realize what an awful boundary you have crossed, you in the press have lost your decency completely.

A sleazy yellow-journalism wannabe who gets off on publishing personal information from young women who've revealed perhaps too much of themselves online. A carrion-crow.

Granted, Slate is enabling her actions.

After decades in which it was open season on jimmy Carter's kids, Clinton's kids, and now the Bush twins, you suddenly get your panties in a bunch about the sacred privacy of Rudy Giuliani and offspring. At long last, why the sudden conversion? Is it because someone close to you (in class terms, let's say) is open to examination? From Kim Agnew to Chelsea Clinton, life has been harder under the microscope. That's democracy for you: it has an ugly side. And are you REALLY all that surprised? "In my day" bla de bla de bla. Tell that to Daniel Boorstin's (Harvard) roommates. He ratted them out to HUAC, remember? Then years later Jerry Ford made him the Librarian of Congress: the first one to be appointed in spite of a negative finding by the ALA. ****** Also, if Rudy doesn't want to be judged by his famioy values, or lack thereof, he should find another party to join. Not that this will hurt him: Ronnie was loathed by his kids too, and it didn't hurt him at all.

IOKIYAR

It's Okay If You're A Republican...

HEY MORON: RUDY GIULIANI HASN'T BEEN ELECTED PRESIDENT. Conflating this instance of press exposure with those of Chelsea Clinton, the Bush Twins etc. just doesn't hold up. Moreover, this girl is ESTRANGED from her father; if, due to some remarkably horrible circumstances, Giuliani were to win the Presidency it's quite obvious this young woman would not be residing with him. She is not by any stretch of the imagination a pubic figure. She's not out campaigning with him. She isn't giving interviews to Seventeen magazine. Does the distinction elude you completely?

My father works in politics and I had the privilege to attend Harvard right around the time Facebook was coming out. My father is no where close to matching Guiliani's visibility, nevertheless, I had the common sense - and courtesy - to not post anything on Facebook I wouldn't want to see on the front page of a major publication. Such is the world we live in and if Caroline has such a problem with it, she should consider giving back the education and other privileges her father's livelihood has provided her.

You don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about, Melvyl. There has always been a certain degree of privacy accorded to the children of politicians, even by the press (even by the Harvard Crimson), because they are CHILDREN. Yes, it's harder for them anyway, but that doesn't mean there should be an open season on them -- at least in the kind of society I would prefer to live in. And yes, the reason I wrote now is because I actually do know this kid as part of a community in which I live so it isn't just some meaningless abstraction to me. You miss the point completely: it isn't Rudolph Guiliani's privacy that's been invaded, it's his daughter's, who had nothing to do with his decisions to run for office, be a Republican, remarry, etc. She is nothing but an innocent bystander. And nothing I said suggested that this is politically motivated or different from anything I've thought before; you don't know me from Adam and that is simply your assumption, based on the difficulty you seem to have in seeing this person as an actual human being. You need to look inside yourself too.

I personally do not believe that a Presidental Candidate's child should be open to debate.

It can be noted however, that Clinton when he was President was wide open as far as his daughter was concerned.

Its time for both parties to leave the children alone.

This criticism was started in the Cliinton Admin. and is simply a follow up on Rove politics.

Can we, the voting public get our politics out of the gutter.

Just because Bush43 and Rove abused the children of Clinton doesn't mean that that type of rhetoric needs to follow us into this next election.

How about the issues?

Respectfully,

wdp

Many50, of course your approach was the smart one to take. Were you always that smart, though -- did you never make a mistake? What a burden to bear. I'm glad for you that you don't seem to resent it. But who says Caroline has a problem with it -- who says she even knew there was a problem until her profile became a teaser on Yahoo thanks to Slate? Maybe you can be her alumni mentor. As to her father providing for her, most of her life her father was in public service while her mother had a successful career of her own -- quite an assumption you're making there.

...it's certainly true that this one was both more honest and accurate on the one hand, and less personal and sleazy on the other, than many of the attacks on Amy Carter, the Bush girls, or (especially) poor Chelsea. And I say the latter as someone not fond of her parents.

It's Rudy's philandering, multiple marriages, and treatment of his kids that's really shameful. Hope this loser doesn't follow the current loser into the White House.

Amen to that.

Wow, you Harvard types are delicate little flowers, eh?

1. It's news (not front page of the NY Times news, but news enough for two paragraphs on Slate). The DAUGHTER of a man running for President doesn't think enough of him to VOTE for him. What kind of a crappy human being do you have to be to lose your OWN DAUGHTER'S vote... FOR PRESIDENT???

2. It isn't as if the author took nude photos of Caroline and posted them or interviewed previous lovers and outed her as gay. Maybe I've become jaded, but the author took something from Caroline's OWN WEBSITE. Which leads to my last point...

3. For the slower kids in class... THE THINGS YOU POST ON THE INTERNET ARE NOT PRIVATE!!!! They can be viewed by MILLIONS of people. (Yes in this case, it was tens of thousands of people... still NOT private).

I doubt this will haunt Caroline for the rest of her life, or even the rest of the month.

"psychological abuse of a minor"? "evil"? "shunned for all eternity"? Maybe "hyperbole" doesn't appear in the dictionaries at Harvard.

I don't know what may have been written elsewhere, but the Slate article certainly did not say anything negative about Caroline in any way, and I see no reason to get one's panties in a wad over this.

You don't suppose that if the Bush twins, or Chelsea, for example, had spoken out in favor of another candidate that it would have been considered news?

In this case, however, given the purported strained family situation, it would have been even more newsworthy had she come out in favor of her father.

Yes, in fact, being that my father has been a public figure for a majority of my life, I have always been mindful of my behavior in ANY public forum, even though I can probably by 99% sure I'm being overly cautious. The idea of my mom or dad seeing me passed out somewhere or even just drinking under age was enough to make me hyper aware. While you may have some type of connection to this girl, don't make excuses for her mindless behavior.

Any man (the Old English word for the French "person") who establishes a public presence upon the WWW by his act makes his content and himself public. In doing so, any man is open for inspection and comment by all.

Whether a man is Hayseed Jimmy Bob from the fields of Kansas or the daughter of The Two-Time Divorced Loser working on his third marriage and former Mayor of NYC, Rudy Giuilani, that man is open to discussion, comment, ridicule.

When you posted your immature comment, kkonrad, you opened up yourself to ridicule and mocking for displaying utter ignorance about 21st Century life.

Stay private if you want to live privately.