Searching for Friends

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 4, 2007 7:48 AM

It was like wandering into a raucous freshman dorm three decades after I last wore bell bottoms.

In just three years, Facebook.com has exploded in popularity as a gated community for the young. But after the social networking site late last year lifted its ban on anyone older than a recent college graduate, I decided to have a look around.

I'm still puzzled by this mysterious process in which some people invite you to become friends (meaning you can see their home pages, photos and compilation of friends) while others blow you off. Some twentysomethings "friended" me out of the blue but never sent me any messages or replied to mine. It almost seems like the point is to collect a long list of names rather than establish relationships outside your immediate circle.

Still, there's an addictive quality to Facebook as you keep checking back to see if you have any new-friend requests or messages -- and feel like a loser if you're isolated. What's more, there's the voyeuristic aspect of getting a peek into people's lives and how they choose to present themselves.

I got (okay, stole) the idea from Slate columnist Emily Yoffe, who describes her social-networking skills as being on par with Ted Kaczynski's. She joined up, wrote a piece and by now has 1,057 friends -- so many that Facebook briefly shut down her communications for exceeding some kind of limit.

So I posted a rudimentary profile and friended Emily, as well as my college-age daughter (who essentially indicated she would rather torch her computer than give me access to her page). I found a friend from The Post (who rather impressively had John Updike as a friend, although he couldn't vouch for the authenticity). And then I waited. And waited.

A young woman in Toronto sent me a friend request, and soon I knew far more about Kelly than I wanted to, thanks to a recent Facebook innovation known as a newsfeed. Every time one of your friends adds a new friend, drops a boyfriend or changes a profile picture, a notification pops up on your home page.

I learned that Kelly had joined the group "Green Acres Day Camp ex-staff in the 1980's and '90s." That she had joined "Costco Lovers" and "Oshawa Red Roof Pizza Hut" and "Old Navy, Store #5463" and "caroline and rachel's school of food fighting and lunch throwing." And such groups as "I do nothing all day . . . because I DON'T HAVE A JOB."

I checked out these groups and they seemed to consist of Kelly and five or six of her friends, with only a handful of posts. Maybe this is the 21st-century equivalent of hanging out.

A more serious young woman named Heather seemed to be quite the committed liberal, who kept attending such films as "An Inconvenient Truth" (though I also learned that she attended a "Drink Specials at Nachos! Party"). I kept getting copied on invitations she sent to her peeps, such as: "Join the Columbia University Working Families Party and the Columbia Coalition Against the War in a night of debate about ways to end the war in Iraq." I was even kept apprised of her mood swings: Heather is "feeling that the world is an extremely crazy place." Take a number.

Meanwhile, I was determined to get into double digits. I got in touch with an ex-colleague, New York Times reporter John Schwartz, who posts wry comments on his recent doings and has 142 friends. But a bit of investigation found that he had an unfair advantage: His son had started a group called "Friend My Father."

One young man who supports Chris Dodd for president and has started a Facebook group for the Connecticut senator boasted that he had gotten through to C-SPAN with "my typically excited pro-CHRIS DODD TIRADE."

Romantic updates popped up. Gregory went from being "in a relationship" to "it's complicated." Soon afterward, I was informed that he was now "in an open relationship." Apparently it was no longer that complicated.

I considered joining some media groups as a way of networking. "Vote Meredith Vieira Off the 'Today Show' Island" had a grand total of one member. (Talk about being on an island!) There were 56 Katie Couric groups, ranging from "Bring Back Bob Schieffer" to "Katie Couric, You Sexy Goddess, Stop Wearing Frumpy Duds!" Diane Sawyer, the co-host of "Good Morning America," has 13 groups, including "Diane Sawyer is HOT." I started to detect a theme.

There didn't seem to be as much interest in male anchors. Brian Williams had a fan club with three members; "Bring Back Brokaw" had 30. As for newspapers, "I Hate the New York Times and Their Liberal Propaganda" drew 64 members.

And yet there are more than 500 groups devoted to beer.

Eventually I had a wee bit of interaction. I received friend invitations from a blogger and two (middle-aged) colleagues, and we briefly exchanged messages. But then it was back to strangers who just wanted me on their swollen lists.

Facebook began at Harvard before spreading to the Ivy League, all colleges and then high schools. Now that anyone can join, a group of members over 25 started a group called "Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 70s." And the point? "Uh, if you need a description, you probably don't belong here. Why don't you go IM somebody or check out a Britney concert."

The throwing open of the cyber-gates -- there are now 22 million members -- is not universally popular among the college crowd.

"It's going to become just as bad as MySpace," one person wrote. "You'll have stalkers, and not just the harmless stalkers like myself who look up that hot girl in their Psych class. And recently some girl from Arkansas or something with no college network (surprise, surprise) started a group for Holocaust denial. This is what happens when you let the rabble in."

Well, it's too late now. I'm up to 29 friends.

Too Good To Check

The quote was so explosive that Susan Estrich couldn't resist using it in her syndicated column.

The topic: "Is there anything Mitt Romney won't say or do to try to win the Republican nomination?"

Picking up on a zinger that John McCain had delivered to his presidential rival, Estrich, who managed Michael Dukakis's 1988 presidential campaign, found a retort online from the Romney camp. She wrote:

"Besides, who is McCain to talk? 'Why don't you go cry about torture some more, old man,' Romney's spokesman is quoted as saying in response. 'When we're in charge, we're going to nonlethally stress the hell out of you in Gitmo #15.'

" 'Old man'? " she wrote. "Ouch. Accusing a man who spent years in a North Vietnam prison of 'cry[ing]about torture' and threatening to 'stress the hell' out of him?"

When the column was sent out, an editor at Michigan's Lansing State Journal, Derek Melot, thought the quote was so outrageous that he wondered why he hadn't heard it before. After an online search, he found that it had come from the satirical Web site Wonkette -- and was completely invented. Creators Syndicate, which handles Estrich's column, quickly sent out a "mandatory correction," and the gaffe apparently never got into print.Estrich, who teaches law at the University of Southern California, says she thought of attributing the quote to Wonkette but figured many readers would be unfamiliar with the site. She says she used the formulation "is quoted as saying" because "I worry about this all the time when I rely on secondary sources. . . .

"I guess I shouldn't consider Wonkette to be 'reporting,' but that's the problem in our brave new world. Where I come from, there's a problem with making up quotes and attributing them to campaign spokesmen, but I guess that's very old-fashioned of me."

Double-checking material from humor sites is also an old-fashioned virtue.

Katie's New Crusade

Katie Couric is taking a stand.

On Friday, when she anchored the "CBS Evening News" from Washington, Couric did a story on D.C. officials pushing for a voting member of Congress. But she went a step further--an unusual step for a network anchor--in endorsing their cause.

In a "Katie's Notebook" video posted on CBS's Web site and made available to its television and radio stations, Couric lamented that "these D.C. residents, who can send their sons and daughters off to war, still do not have a vote." After summarizing each side's case, Couric concluded: "Every American deserves to have someone on their side voting in Congress."

Even those who agree with her might question whether Couric, who was unavailable for comment, should be taking sides on a political issue. But she is no stranger to the controversy, having grown up in Arlington.

Moving right along, the LAT says that Bush sure is pushing a lot of ideas, such as curbing climate change, for a lame duck.

The Politico is on the White House shakeup watch:

"Former Republican national chairman Ed Gillespie has emerged as a potential replacement to Dan Bartlett as counselor to President Bush, friends say.

"Questioned about the prospect Saturday night at a fundraising dinner for the Virginia GOP, which he now chairs, Gillespie said he was 'flattered at the notion.'

" 'It's not for me to rule it in or out,' he added, 'You'll have to ask the president.'

" 'We don't comment or speculate on personnel decisions,' said White House spokesman Tony Fratto."

Hmmm: I didn't see any denials in there.

All right, let's go to last night's Democratic debate in New Hampshire. Here's my insta-reaction:

They're all against the war.

Barack Obama was among the first to be against it -- and told John Edwards he was 4-1/2 years late to the party.

Edwards conceded the point, saying: "I should never have voted for this war . . . He was right, I was wrong."

Hillary Clinton, asked by Wolf Blitzer if she regretted not reading the prewar National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, said: "Wolf, I was thoroughly briefed. I knew all the arguments." She never quite answered the question, but said we shouldn't argue about the past.

Joe Biden said, let's get real, it takes 67 Senate votes to pull out the troops and we don't have the votes.

They all want health care reform. Edwards says Obama's plan will leave 15 million folks uncovered. Hillary is "thrilled" that universal health care is back on the agenda.

Hillary rejected Bill's don't-ask-don't-tell. (She's probably rejected it as a marriage philosophy as well.)

So: How did they do? No one hit a home run. Nobody struck out. Most did reasonably well. But they avoided taking each other on, yielding no rhetorical slapdowns of the sort that make the evening news.

I take that back. Obama went after Blitzer when he asked for a show of hands on whether English should be America's official language.

"This is the kind of question that is designed precisely to divide us," the Illinois senator declared. I wonder if he gets the anti-Blitzer vote.

"Eight Democratic presidential hopefuls differed sharply over Iraq and terrorism Sunday night in a largely polite debate that highlighted their contrasting histories on the war," says the L.A. Times. The paper is right. It was polite. "In one of the most barbed exchanges of the evening, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama snapped at former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for suggesting that Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had failed to show leadership in withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Obama, who opposed the war before he was elected to the Senate, noted that Edwards had voted in 2002 to authorize President Bush to invade Iraq."

Says the NYT: "The three leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination attacked each other overtly and subtly Sunday over Iraq and their judgment, honesty and leadership in handling that war."

Attacks? They were more like gibes.

"Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, the front-runner in national polls, both drew fire and calmly returned it in the second nationally televised Democratic debate, arguing that the differences among the Democrats were minor compared with their differences with President Bush.

"But former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina repeatedly went after Mrs. Clinton and Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, accusing them of being followers in Congress -- not leaders -- in the effort to bring an end to the war."

Boston Globe: "Senator Hillary Clinton last night took a page from her husband's 1992 primary campaign and tried to emphasize the broad points of agreement among Democrats against Republicans. But several of the Democratic candidates on stage with her were not listening . . .

"Bill Clinton successfully used the we-agree-and-they-don't tactic to smooth over some of his differences with Democratic activists -- subtly reminding them that victory was more important than perfection. But his favorite tactic didn't work for Hillary.

"The Iraq war is simply too pressing a concern for most Democrats."

David Yepsen of the Des Moines Register goes out on a limb:

"The three frontrunners in the Democratic race for president - John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama - emerged as the winners of Sunday night's debate in New Hampshire.

"Edwards probably did himself the most good.

"He looked tanned and confident during the session. He argued forcefully for quickly ending the war in Iraq and for his national health care plan. He tweaked Clinton and Obama for not speaking more forcefully against the war."

He looked tanned? Will they all now be spending more time in salons?

Let's look at some of the live-blogging from last night:

Kos:

"Shorter Hillary Clinton: 'I trusted Bush on Iraq.' That, alone, should be enough to disqualify her. 'Good judgment' is a must-have trait for our next president.

"I don't know why she just can't say about her war authorization vote: 'I regret that vote. It was a mistake.' Edwards did so and it hasn't hurt him. In fact, given our current president's inability to admit a mistake, being honest about the biggest whiffs is kind of refreshing. But Hillary is learning the worst lessons from Bush. And thus, rather than admit she screwed up, she's reduced to arguing that she placed all her trust on Bush."

National Review's Jim Geraghty, at the halftime break:

"Larry King says it's been a very lively 60 minutes that 'moved very quickly.' Is he insane? I've seen one interesting exchange between Obama and Edwards. Biden is entertaining to watch. Hillary strikes me as deliberately boring."

Andrew Sullivan likes Hill:

"She did well, it seems to me. There were times when her robo-lecture act began to wear down my ear-drums, but, in general, Senator Clinton bestrode the debate as an authoritative figure. In fact, I've never witnessed a U.S. political debate in which a woman clearly dominated as she did tonight. She was hawkish . . .

"Clinton cannot concede anything critical about someone she called at one point 'my dear husband.' Yes, I gagged on that one. What a total phony. But an effective, shameless one."

The New Republic's Jason Zengerle:

"Maybe it's my Obama-tinted glasses, but I thought he did very well, particularly early in the debate when he sparred a bit with Edwards. Hillary was bland, cautious, and tried to hold herself above the fray--just about what you'd expect. Edwards, to me at least, was very grating--particularly with his whole 'legislating versus leading' meme. He didn't do much of either when he was in the Senate.

"As for the second tier, I thought both Biden and Dodd did very well--Biden for telling his 'hard truths' . . . and Dodd for his final answer about making the restoration of civil liberties his top priority. They probaby didn't do well enough to move out of the second tier, but I do think they distinguished themselves from Gravel and Kucinich.

"Which brings me to Bill Richardson. Is there any reason at this point that we should take his candidacy any more seriously than we do Gravel's and Kucinich's? If there is, I certainly didn't see it in this debate."

And how's this for mid-debate spin, as noted by my colleague Chris Cillizza?

"With less than a half hour left in the debate, Sen. Chris Dodd's campaign issued a press release insisting he is getting a raw deal.

"The release notes that Dodd has only been asked to answer four questions and has spent less than four minutes total talking. 'Really nothing about the debate was equitable, from the unprecedented assignment of podiums to the allotment of time. We'll count on the DNC at future events to mandate some even-handedness,' said Dodd spokeswoman Christy Setzer."

Dodd must have been even more steamed when Wolf gave him 5 seconds for his debate-closing answer.

And the CNN debate lost one viewer, Ann Althouse

"Confession: I'm in a bit of a TiVo lag, and 'The Sopranos' is about to start. So... I'm bailing!"

A case of bloggus interruptus.