Media Harsh on Spanish PM's Daughters

Last week photos of President and Mrs. Obama, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, his wife and their two daughters -- Laura, 16, and Alba, 13 -- at a UN reception in New York City were posted on the State Department's Web site on Flickr. But what the U.S. government didn't know at the time was that Spanish law prohibits the media from publishing photos of the prime minister's children.

The photos subsequently spread like wildfire online. Last Thursday Zapatero's office scrambled to remove all of the photos from the Web and even asked Spanish news agency EFE not to distribute them . But there are still many copies of the photos circulating around the Web .

The online community soon turned harsh against the children who donned all black in the photos. The Guardian newspaper in the UK ran a headline that read "Pictures of Spanish PM's daughters get thumbs up from goths." US News and World Report writes that many Spaniards received e-mails with digitally altered versions of the photo depicting the two teens as members of the Addams family, band members of KISS and J.R.R. Tolkien's troll-like Orcs . BettyConfidential.com wrote , "It seems the girls are Goth, mucho, mucho, mucho Goth. Like in … your daughter wears combat boots, even when she is being introduced to the leader of the free world."

In her Monday post on the Daily Beast, Meghan McCain expressed sympathy for the public crucifixion of the children.

"The second part of this that makes me very sad is that these two girls are enduring a sort of baptism by fire with the media scrutiny that surrounds their family portrait with the Obamas. Not only are they not used to being photographed, but their first foray into being photographed and criticized is on a very public scale with the most famous and powerful politicians in the entire world," she wrote .

In this country, children of presidents have often been the subject of mockery. In 1998 Sen. John McCain reportedly told a joke saying , "Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno." Chelsea was also the subject of a 1992 "Wayne's World" skit on "Saturday Night Live" in which she was called a "babe in development. "

The Bush twins, Barbara and Jenna, have also not had it easy. Jenna was caught twice for underage drinking in a month , once with Barbara. White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly tried to clamp down on incident. "If it involves the daughters in their private lives, it is a family matter," he said.

The Kennedys didn't appreciate their young children being photographed, and the Obama administration's policy has been much the same.

"If the children are participating in official events with the president and first lady, then they're part of the first family," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs . "But when the children are alone, or when the president and first lady are in their roles strictly as mother and father, there should be a wide berth of privacy extended to the family."