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Daughters, Staffers Usher Farenthold Onto Instagram

After constant nagging from his two college-aged daughters, a talk-show-host-turned-congressman has agreed to take Instagram users behind the scenes while he’s at work.

(Screengrab)
(Screenshot)

Rep. Blake Farenthold couldn’t use his BlackBerry to upload photographs to Instagram, so he was letting the account lie dormant — that is, until his daughters finally wore him down and his staffers agreed to help.

“I finally changed for my daughters — who were giving me a hard time, literally, every day about it — and set it up as an official account,” the Texas Republican told HOH.

Farenthold has worked out a solution to the problem that was keeping him away: He takes the pictures on his BlackBerry and emails them to his staff, who use iPhones to upload the pictures to their boss’s account.

“I’m usually an early adopter of tech and would’ve been on it a lot sooner” were it not for the BlackBerry issue, he reassured HOH.

Farenthold, who also uses Twitter and Facebook to stay connected, shared four photos from Wednesday’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the Benghazi, Libya, attacks of Sept. 11, 2012. His goal in using the photo-sharing platform, which he referred to as “Insta” at one point, is to give a behind-the-scenes look at what he does, he said.

“I want to use Instagram the way somebody who is not a congressman would use Instagram but show some of the things you might only see as a congressman on it,” Farenthold said. “A member of the public who had gone to that hearing might not have had a view from behind the dais.”

As for Friday, the House is in recess, so Farenthold is at home in Texas. He told HOH he’s taken a couple of photos while out and about in his district, but his staffers haven’t put them online yet.

“You know how those D.C. staff get when the boss is in district,” he quipped. “When the cat’s away, the mice play.”

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