Spreading a Google Problem, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #147

September 27, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 1 Comment

Dear Art,

I have a problem.  Most specifically I have what has been termed a Google problem.  If you look my name up on Google the top hit is not my campaign website or my Wikipedia entry.  Instead it is a website set up to popularize a crude definition for my name coined by syndicated columnist Dan Savage.  Many pundits have said this has been a fatal problem to my bid for the republican nomination for the presidency.  Last week I asked Google to remove that page from searches for my name and claimed that if a prominent democrat were suffering in this way they would do them this service.  Google declined to help me.  Do I have any other options to save my candidacy?

-Rick Santorum

Rick,

Can we just start by clarifying how lucky you are that you don’t go by “Dick?”  If, after all that Savage has put you through your name was Dick Santorum I don’t know that anyone anywhere could ever possibly take you seriously.  I feel the same way about Ricky Santorum.  You might be in a bad place right this second but those are two serious bullets you dodged and I think you should take a moment to be thankful for what you have.

Other options to save your candidacy, huh?  You could start by admitting you don’t think you can win the nomination.  You want to be a more prominent guest on news talk segments.  Your views on just about everything are radically out of sync with just about every demographic of Americans except Republican-primary-debate-goer.  I haven’t seen you poll out of the singe digits in a long time.  I think you’re coasting on name recognition right now and a lot of your name recognition is seriously gross.

Your political bias charges are way off base.  Searches for democratic political figures will often lead to similarly outrageous websites.  For the longest time the top hit on an image search for Michelle Obama was a racist photoshop.  The perfect storm of being not very popular on your own and being targeted by a very popular personality hit you.  Now you’re in a vicious cycle, you are certainly gaining name recognition but no one ever talks about you without mentioning your Google problem.  Then people look that up and you’re always trapped under the weight of your past.

The biggest thing you could do is stop being a big enough asshole that people want to fuck with you like this online.  You think said that homosexual relationships were of equal validity to “man on child” and “man on dog” relationships.  When given a chance to back off of that you didn’t and have doubled down over and over.  If you were just some jerk in the local tavern this wouldn’t be a problem but you were a senator and now you want to be president.  If you can’t take the heat of being unpopular that politics is probably not the kitchen for you.