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"I'm more liberal on social issues," she said carefully in a recent interview on the campaign plane, "but when it comes to global warming, stem-cell research and the war in Iraq, we agree on those issues."
What Meghan does share with her father is his penchant for small talk -- well known to those who follow her posts or the captions she writes to accompany the hundreds of photos on the blog.
For a while, she said, McCain's campaign felt like "a rock band that was on tour, hoping to have their recent album go platinum." Other musings, as she calls them, also veer far off her father's campaign message.
Her "pseudo-first date" with a Ron Paul supporter? "I didn't have the heart to tell him who my dad was," she blogged. That close-up shot of Henry Kissinger's shoes? "Who doesn't want to know what kind of shoes Dr. Kissinger wears?" Her father's diet? "My dad wanted to eat a candy bar for dinner, I said 'hand it over' and got him a salad." The green rubber band McCain wears on his wrist? "It's sort of like his stress ball that he wears all the time." Florida Gov. Charlie Crist -- a potential McCain running mate? "FYI: he's just as handsome in person as he is on TV," she wrote.
When readers e-mailed asking about her look, she answered with an 800-word treatise, including her all-time favorite eye shadow shade ("Kitten") and her lip gloss shade ("Life on the A-List" is one).
Some of Meghan's posts have generated vicious Web commentary on celebrity or political gossip sites. Readers have picked apart every aspect of her appearance from her weight to her platinum hair. When the online magazine Salon wrote about Meghan, one reader asked, "Why is this girl so vapid?" The media gossip website Gawker noted that her post on the night the New York Times story was published was followed up with "500 pictures of herself"; a reader wrote, " Chelsea could totally kick this girl's ass."
When the insults began last fall, they caught Meghan off guard: "They see blond hair and they see makeup, and automatically I am whatever their blond stereotype is." The upside, she said, is that young girls have thanked her for demonstrating that interest in world events and "fun clothes" aren't mutually exclusive -- and that doesn't make one an "airhead."
"I didn't know I was going to become the spokesperson for that -- but it's kind of what happened," Meghan said.
Reading the scathing comments was a window into her mother's experience in the 2000 presidential campaign, when McCain's foes distributed fliers falsely insinuating that Cindy McCain had a drug problem and claiming that Meghan's younger sister, Bridget, whom her parents adopted from Bangladesh, was McCain's illegitimate child.
When friends began sending Meghan links to some of the negative comments about her blog, Cindy McCain fired off an e-mail telling them to stop.
"I've related to Mom in a lot of ways recently in how cruel people can be online," Meghan said, as her mother sat protectively beside her during the interview. "You have to brush it off."
The critiques haven't altered the scope of Meghan's blog -- though she did recently trade in her much-talked-about heels for Chuck Taylor sneakers on the trail.
She isn't sure whether the blog has an effect on her father's appeal to voters. "I do think people are looking at him a little bit more like a dad," she said. "But I think it's been statistically shown that kids have almost nothing to do with the way you see the candidate.
"The blog for me was showing young women they could be interested in politics and everything else," she said. "I choose to show that I'm a real person with, you know, shortcomings, and that this is my life."
maeve.reston@latimes.com
What Meghan does share with her father is his penchant for small talk -- well known to those who follow her posts or the captions she writes to accompany the hundreds of photos on the blog.
For a while, she said, McCain's campaign felt like "a rock band that was on tour, hoping to have their recent album go platinum." Other musings, as she calls them, also veer far off her father's campaign message.
Her "pseudo-first date" with a Ron Paul supporter? "I didn't have the heart to tell him who my dad was," she blogged. That close-up shot of Henry Kissinger's shoes? "Who doesn't want to know what kind of shoes Dr. Kissinger wears?" Her father's diet? "My dad wanted to eat a candy bar for dinner, I said 'hand it over' and got him a salad." The green rubber band McCain wears on his wrist? "It's sort of like his stress ball that he wears all the time." Florida Gov. Charlie Crist -- a potential McCain running mate? "FYI: he's just as handsome in person as he is on TV," she wrote.
When readers e-mailed asking about her look, she answered with an 800-word treatise, including her all-time favorite eye shadow shade ("Kitten") and her lip gloss shade ("Life on the A-List" is one).
Some of Meghan's posts have generated vicious Web commentary on celebrity or political gossip sites. Readers have picked apart every aspect of her appearance from her weight to her platinum hair. When the online magazine Salon wrote about Meghan, one reader asked, "Why is this girl so vapid?" The media gossip website Gawker noted that her post on the night the New York Times story was published was followed up with "500 pictures of herself"; a reader wrote, " Chelsea could totally kick this girl's ass."
When the insults began last fall, they caught Meghan off guard: "They see blond hair and they see makeup, and automatically I am whatever their blond stereotype is." The upside, she said, is that young girls have thanked her for demonstrating that interest in world events and "fun clothes" aren't mutually exclusive -- and that doesn't make one an "airhead."
"I didn't know I was going to become the spokesperson for that -- but it's kind of what happened," Meghan said.
Reading the scathing comments was a window into her mother's experience in the 2000 presidential campaign, when McCain's foes distributed fliers falsely insinuating that Cindy McCain had a drug problem and claiming that Meghan's younger sister, Bridget, whom her parents adopted from Bangladesh, was McCain's illegitimate child.
When friends began sending Meghan links to some of the negative comments about her blog, Cindy McCain fired off an e-mail telling them to stop.
"I've related to Mom in a lot of ways recently in how cruel people can be online," Meghan said, as her mother sat protectively beside her during the interview. "You have to brush it off."
The critiques haven't altered the scope of Meghan's blog -- though she did recently trade in her much-talked-about heels for Chuck Taylor sneakers on the trail.
She isn't sure whether the blog has an effect on her father's appeal to voters. "I do think people are looking at him a little bit more like a dad," she said. "But I think it's been statistically shown that kids have almost nothing to do with the way you see the candidate.
"The blog for me was showing young women they could be interested in politics and everything else," she said. "I choose to show that I'm a real person with, you know, shortcomings, and that this is my life."
maeve.reston@latimes.com
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