Want to Work for Obama? Better Not Be Committing a Felony in a Facebook Photo
By Jesse Singal - Nov 13th, 2008 at 11:12 amFrom The New York Times:
Want a top job in the Obama administration? Only pack rats need apply, preferably those not packing controversy.
A seven-page questionnaire being sent by the office of President-elect Barack Obama to those seeking cabinet and other high-ranking posts may be the most extensive — some say invasive — application ever.
The questionnaire includes 63 requests for personal and professional records, some covering applicants’ spouses and grown children as well, that are forcing job-seekers to rummage from basements to attics, in shoe boxes, diaries and computer archives to document both their achievements and missteps.
Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.
The application also asks applicants to “please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.”
Every online handle I’ve used? You mean if I apply I have to tell an Obama staffer that between 1997 and 1999 I was known on AOL as ShyGrrl69? Damn it!
Obama’s people seem to realize that every day we’re lurching closer to the first major scandal involving a national-level political figure and his or her MySpace/Facebook/whatever page. When you think about the potential for this sort of scandal down the road, it’s staggering: once we reach a point where the average person old enough to run for office lived through their teens and twenties in a post-LiveJournal world, opposition research will take on a whole new dimension.
Post a Comment