Rick Santorum Fights His Google Problem
GOP candidate reportedly calls on Google to end dirty search results.
Sept. 22, 2011 -- Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has decided to do something about his Google problem, reportedly calling on the company to eliminate dirty search results connected to his name.
Just type his name into the search browser and you'll see why. Instead of campaign websites and Wikipedia pages, the top two results for "Santorum" link to foul, sex-related definitions of the former Pennsylvania senator's name that were circulated by gay rights activist and prankster columnist Dan Savage.
In response to comments the former Senator made in 2003 equating homosexuality with polygamy and incest, Savage launched an online competition to redefine the word "Santorum."
Read more about Santorum's Google problem here.
The winning result is not child-approved, to say the least, and Santorum, 53, is fed up with the "filth," as he calls it. The White House hopeful has reportedly called on Google to filter the unflattering search results, which have topped the list for more than six years.
"I suspect if something was up there like that about Joe Biden, they'd get rid of it," he told Politico. "If you're a responsible business, you don't let things like that happen in your business that have an impact on the country."
The White House hopeful added that "to have a business allow that type of filth to be purveyed through their website or through their system is something that they say they can't handle but I suspect that's not true."
The campaign has yet to return a request for comment.
Google's response: Don't blame the messenger, blame the webmaster.
"Google's search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the Web," company spokesman Gabriel Stricker said in a statement. "Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly.
"Once the webmaster takes the page down from the Web, it will be removed from Google's search results through our usual crawling process."
Stricker added that Google does "not remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."
While Santorum has criticized both Savage and Google multiple times for the search results, he also used the issue to raise campaign donations.
"Savage and his perverted sense of humor is the reason why my children cannot Google their father's name," Santorum wrote in a July letter to campaign supporters, according to Politico. "That is why I need your support today, and your contribution of $25, $50, $100 or $250 to my campaign. You can help right now by making a small or large contribution to my campaign. Don't let Dan Savage and the extreme left win."
In the 2003 interview with the Associated Press, Santorum said homosexual acts "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family."
"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home," Santorum said in the interview, "then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does."
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