Meghan McCain exposed… as pretty smart.

On Wednesday night, Daily Beast columnist and political child Meghan McCain decided to stay in to read a book. A rabid Twitter user, she decided to share this with the world tweeting “my ’spontaneous’ night in…” with a link to a photo of her holding the book “Andy Warhol” by Arthur Danto. I discovered the photo on Reddit.com where it was captioned “OMG Megan McCain you sexy piece of Republican ass!”

She’s wearing a tank top and her cleavage is certainly more eye-catching than the Warhol book.

She has almost 70,000 followers on Twitter so the photo soon went viral. The media’s gone crazy over the photo, with over 214 articles pouring into Google News as of this writing.

I have many veteran political journalism friends who were a bit outraged when 24-year-old Meghan McCain got her own political column at the Daily Beast. But her response to the Twitter uproar shows she’s quite savvy when it comes to media.

McCain was shocked that her photo would make national news, even anchoring a special segment on CNN. She writes that it’s unfair to get this level of media attention because she’s a woman and has breasts. I would quibble with her there. I think Obama got a similar level of attention when he waded shirtless in the Hawaiian surf. Public figures who are usually spotted only in formal business wear tend to cause waves when they show skin.

But what made McCain’s photo interesting is that she posted it herself. Though she says in her column that she has breasts and can’t help that, it is a posed and sexy photo. It’s playful and she certainly knew that. What she seemed to have forgotten was the divide between what should be public and what should be private. Networks like Facebook and Twitter are increasingly blurring the line between the two. McCain sums that up well here:

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I live my life very openly. I will happily tell you what I’m doing every minute of every day. I will tell you what songs I’m listening to, what movies I’ve seen, and what books I’ve read. (That’s Arthur Danto’s new biography of Andy Warhol in the photo, by the way.) I love reading other people’s Tweets to me.

It’s amazing what you can learn. And I’ve certainly endured my share of harsh comments from those who follow me. But yesterday was the first time it really wasn’t fun. It’s not easy to be called a slut. But I’m not giving up my Twitter just yet—I’m just going to be more judicious in how I use it.

via Don’t Call Me a Slut – The Daily Beast .

This is another lesson in thinking about how exposed — literally — you want to be online. McCain has since taken her photos down… though she was willing to run the photo along with her column.

This may have been an embarrassing episode for her, but I think her column may get a whole lot more popular moving forward.