Photo: (Jeff Riedel)
Meghan McCain, the 27-year-old daughter of 2008 Republican Presidential candidate John McCain and a feisty young conservative personality, is no stranger to the media hot seat. As a popular pundit princess, she's used to taking some heavy unfriendly fire from her own party as well as Democrats. Usually the blogosphere going H.A.M. is #NBD to this outspoken politica, but the super sexist and hateful remarks that flooded her feed after some cable commentary last week had Megan standing up to bullying. What the heck happened?!
As a moderate gal whose stance on social issues like same-sex marriage (she supports it) differs from hardliners, Meghan often riles up the Republican establishment. So when she visited Al Sharpton's show on MSNBC, "PoliticsNation" last week and mouthed off about her outsider status at GOP High, it definitely got the party started:
"I'm a proud moderate Republican, but using the word 'moderate' in the Republican party today is considered a dirty word," Megan claimed. "Many people in the Republican party treat me like I'm a freak, like there's something wrong with me and that I'm a mutant from the original design."
But it was her mention of Andrew Breitbart, a beloved conservative media kingpin and editor of the right-wing Drudge Report who recently passed away, that really caused the internet backlash to unleash:
"I wish I knew more where it came from because I don't understand the popularity of Michelle Malkin and Andrew Breitbart and people who exacerbate people's fears," she said.
Soon, Megan was getting so many nasty remarks on the interwebz that she posted a personal plea on The Daily Beast, home of her web series "Stark Raving Megan," asking that cyberbullies leave her alone.
In her takedown of the intense digital haterade, she made a point to not only call out the anonymous people blowing up her Twitter, but also the legit online sources that she felt gave her a raw deal -- specifically two stories posted on former MSNBC anchor Dan Abrams's site Mediaite. The powerful politico didn't take kindly to being lumped in with those that were calling Megan fat, ugly, clueless and worse -- so he blasted back at Megan, defending his writers' balanced coverage of her remarks and throwing the "bully" ball back in her court.
And even though McCain is a vocal gay rights advocate, she couldn't even catch a break with her own party's LGBT conservative crew, GOProud. The founders released this statement about her "attack" on Andrew Breitbart:
"During his life, Andrew Breitbart did more for gay people, and showed more political courage on behalf of gay people, than Meghan McCain could ever dream of...Meghan McCain has made quite the career for herself picking fights with high profile conservatives and then going on liberal outlets to trash them. She picked a fight this time with a man who isn't even alive to defend himself. As usual, however, this is a fight Meghan McCain has lost."
DANG. This is a full-blown cyber circus. Clearly, Megan should not have to endure that kind of blowback on the interwebz since it has NOTHING to do with healthy political discussion -- even if it was #toosoon for her to name drop a recently deceased political opponent. But should she have included other media outlets that were apparently trying to debate her comments in a fair fight? And is she the one that's bullying the GOP party? Y'all tell us in the comments and remember to take Action against cyber bullying below!
