The most surprising facet of Senator John McCain’s Facebook profile is that he boasts only 10,824 friends or supporters ― approximately the same amount as a semi-popular 16-year old. Pundits and political prognosticators could have beaten the curve on diagnosing McCain’s faltering bid if they had counted his Facebook friends instead of waiting for his second quarter fundraising reports. Under television, McCain lists 24 as his favorite program. Hmm, McCain a fan of Jack Bauer ― anyone surprised? His MySpace page is a slight improvement with 39,381 friends but the friend count is still comparatively low and dropped nearly 700 in the past month from 40,204. There’s that prescient correlation again. One of McCain’s remaining friends posted on his wall, “hey man! i got the same last name as u.... ur like my 3rd cousin or something like that.” There’s one family reunion not to miss.
On the Democratic side, Illinois Senator Barack Obama boasts far and away the most supporters on Facebook and MySpace and appears to be the favorite among users barely older than his daughters — 6 and 8. More evidence of Obama’s online success is apparent in his second quarter fundraising report. Obama raised approximately $10 million online and 90 per cent of the donations were under $100 and 50 per cent of those were under $25. Obama’s musical appetite ranges from aging counter culture icon Bob Dylan and jazz musicians Miles Davis and Stevie Wonder to the rabble rousing Johann Sebastian Bach and his irrepressible cello suites. His movies read straight from the American Film Institute archives. The classic flicks listed feature stars including Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, an Italian crime family, Jack Nicholson as R.P. McMurphy in an insane asylum, and endless close-ups of Peter O’Toole’s sand-ravaged face and sky blue eyes in Lawrence of Arabia. My only gripe with Obama’s networking skills is that he seems to only join groups with “Barack” and “President” in the name.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton’s MySpace page reveals her obsession with American Idol, her taste for chocolate, talent for crossword puzzles, and enough other banal information to fill a 2,000 word article in US Weekly. Her page also provides the option to receive text message updates on your cell phone about Hillary’s campaign and features an “Add Hillary as your friend” link proclaiming in all caps, “I am not only voting for Hillary, she’s my friend!” The first female presidential candidate doesn’t fare too well on Facebook, where more than 500 groups are dedicated to Hillary — most of them to hating her. There are “Anti-Hillary” groups and “Anti Anti-Hillary” groups and even one “Against people apart of against Hillary Clinton for president groups” which may or may not be for Hillary, I still haven’t made any sense of it.
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