My name is special. It always has been. Since I was in third grade and Neil O'Donnell was a football player for the Steelers, I've known that my last name is kind of a big deal. Then Rosie O'Donnell popped onto the scene. She was irritating, and a loudmouth, and then she came out as a lesbian (shocker, right?). She's thankfully faded into the background over time. Next came Chris O'Donnell. Initially, I didn't care much about him. Now, I like him a lot on NCIS: LA, even though the show itself pales when compared to the original NCIS, but whatever, he's a decent guy.
About two and a half years ago, I Googled myself. We've all done it, and quite frankly, it's the smart thing to do in case you share a name with an ax murderer and you're trying to get a job. (I was actually given that advice at a job fair last fall.) Usually, my UD website would pop up when I typed my name in, but this time, a website for another Christine O'Donnell came up first. I was a little relieved because I hadn't updated my personal website in awhile. So I clicked on the link and looked through her page. I got that she was from somewhere on the East coast, and that her political views were the polar opposite of mine, but I pushed it aside, figuring that I wouldn't hear about her again.
Clearly, I was wrong. I found an email from my mom from the fall of 2008, telling me how she had found the other Christine O'Donnell's website. But this was old news to me, so I didn't think anything about it. She wasn't affiliated with my political party, and she wasn't from my state, so what's the big deal?
The big deal is that I'm sick of it. Maybe it wouldn't bug me so much if I didn't already go through years of being teased about "being related" to Rosie O'Donnell, or being called McDonald. Maybe if Christine O'Donnell wasn't completely crazy, and the media wouldn't have so much to pick on her about, I wouldn't be so bothered. Maybe if I didn't have to remember which businesses don't like the apostrophe and which require it for my name to show up in their database, I wouldn't care. But with all of those things combined, I do care, and it does bother me.
Unless your name is Sarah Palin, Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton, or you share a name with any other scandalous (or publicly ridiculed) person, you don't know what this feels like. How would you like it if people hear your name and the first thing that comes to their mind is a woman who not only doesn't masturbate, but speaks publicly about the evils of masturbation. Or a woman who dabbled in witchcraft (which isn't necessarily a bad thing, media moguls!) and went into hiding for a week after that became public knowledge. Or a woman who went bankrupt, foreclosed on her house, and then used campaign funds to buy a condo? The next time you think about writing something about Christine O'Donnell on my Facebook page, or tweeting it, or emailing, or even telling me about it, I want you to think about your purpose. Are you telling me this to make me feel better about myself and my name? Or are you saying it to draw even more attention to someone who doesn't deserve all the attention she's received? Believe me, if there's something else that comes out in the news, I'll know about it. Come on now, I spend all day online. There's no way I could miss something about her. And if I want to know about it, I'll read it for myself. But sometimes I don't want to know. So please, let me be the one to decide what I do and do not know about Christine O'Donnell. Besides, I generally don't like to have other people spew political things my way... why would Christine O'Donnell be any different, just because we happen to have the same name? Stop writing about her on my wall. Stop the tweets. Stop the emails. Just stop.
~ Christine
That's what I put up with for 23 years - Jenny Jones Jenny Jones Jenny Jones. I say that anytime someone posts something/emails you/whatever about the other Christine O'Donnell, just delete it. Don't even bother reading it, as the joke was funny last year. I feel your pain!
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