August 04, 2008 10:47 PM UTC

"Schaffer Family Values" On Facebook Display?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Some of you may remember that back in May, photos of Governor Bill Ritter’s son August hosting a party for friends at the Governor’s Mansion (with beer prominently featured) made their way from the online social networking site Facebook into the pages of the Denver Post, as well as local TV news. Republican-leaning blogs and pundits enjoyed poking fun at the various ‘unseemly’ angles of the story for a few days, before it blew over since apparently no persons were harmed during the taking of said photos.

The incident revisited something that most people know these days: the “private” material on these social networking sites really isn’t private at all, and indiscrete bits of information posted in these forums can come back to haunt the person doing the posting–especially when that person (or in August Ritter’s case, his dad) is in the public eye.

With that in mind, you may have heard something in the last few days about one of GOP Senate candidate Bob Schaffer’s kid’s Facebook pages. We’re aware the scoop is making its way around, and we were anonymously forwarded this link over the weekend:

https://schafferfamilyvalues.com/

It appears to be a mirror of Bob Schaffer’s son Justin Schaffer’s (age 20) Facebook profile, and it appears to host a few questionable images of its own. Some, it turns out, with a much more obvious political implication than August Ritter’s kegger.

We should note that this isn’t the “live” Facebook page for Justin Schaffer, since you have to have “friended” him to see his profile. But it looks like one of a couple of versions of it that we’ve seen, both with these same images posted to his profile–meaning one of his “friends” mirrored the page and started sending it around. Some of the illustrations on the page are garden-variety freerepublic.com jokes. Others, such as the Barack Obama/Count Chocula collage you see above, might be a little harder to explain away benignly. Some noteworthy images displayed by Schaffer include:

A couple of points to consider while you evaluate this: Justin Schaffer has written a letter or two in support of his father’s campaign we were able to find, and all of Bob Schaffer’s children are featured prominently on his campaign website and TV spots (Justin was one of the smiling kids seen popping out of Mt. McKinley). However, we haven’t heard it alleged that Justin is working for his father’s election campaign in any meaningful capacity.

But neither was Bill Ritter’s kid, and yet reporters found his kegger surprisingly newsworthy. Is turnabout fair play? And what does this sort of distasteful political stuff say about, as this site’s name baits you to ask, Schaffer family values?