We broke this story in early August with a little context:
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:
http://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.
The story of Bob Schaffer’s son and his politically and racially-charged Facebook page turned into a major embarrassment to his Senate campaign–for all the freshly dug-up scandals that plagued Schaffer though the election, this was one of the only ones that got significant TV news play. And in the context of the kinds of accusations Schaffer was defending himself against at the time, the particulars of Justin’s little “jokes” couldn’t have been worse, as a commenter summarized:
Schaffer is running as a “family values” candidate, so it seems only natural to see just how well his version of “family values” has transferred to his own family.
This also occurred on the heels of multiple stories about Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams’ offensive demeanor with the press, dovetailing seamlessly with this gaffe as we noted:
Just a lovely portrait being painted here, isn’t it? To be fair, it should be noted that these two narratives seem distinct from one another, with Schaffer’s foul-mouthed bigoted kid and the foul-mouthed “itinerant political hitman” fronting Bob Schaffer’s campaign not having any real connection other than…
Oh, wait a minute.
Bottom line: crushing defeats like the one Bob Schaffer suffered are almost never the result of one singular incident, but some chunks of wreckage are bigger than others.
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The best revenge is the descendent of slaves reigning as First Lady in the White House built by slaves.
I don’t think Michelle Obama’s ancestors were part of the group of slaves building the pyramids in the picture mini-Schaffer is so fond of. 🙂
OK, before someone flips out about me supporting mini-Schaffer or slavery, ctfd, I’m kidding.
This was a nice reminder that slavery and freedom are everyone’s cause and should always be.
Of course that didn’t stop Rep. Everything’s About Me Being Black Marshall from making it a personal attack on her poor, battered soul.
droll seems to be pointing out that African blacks are not the only people in history to suffer from slavery. The Irish, Catholics, Jews, Chinese, teenage girls in the former Soviet Union, etc. Where is all the outrage over all the enslavement of non-blacks?
I still think you have to leave the kids out of dirty political campaigns.
I guess I should have clarified that this went right over my head.
“Of course that didn’t stop Rep. Everything’s About Me Being Black Marshall from making it a personal attack on her poor, battered soul.”
I thought it was just me, though. 🙂
up top. Rep. Marshall weighed in on the Facebook page.
state lawmaker is upset about something that could be viewed as related to race**, it’s Marshall.
Always seemed a little odd to me, some of the most racist things I heard on the House floor came out of her mouth.
**I’m sticking with Dabee47’s disclaimer here, everyone involved in this incident is a jerk. Marshall just bothers me when she does that.
I expected it to look more like Osama, he looks more like Jafar from Aladdin. Was that the message? Just wait, America, he’s going to change.. into an evil genie by Robin Williams’ voice. Scary!
he’s’ he’s a arab!”
Still the funniest quote of the entire campaign in my book.