Webloggin » Scary Peace-People III

Jim Moose is the father of Julia Wilson, the highschool-freshman class Bush-hater who was pulled out of class and questioned by the Secret Service for threatening to kill the President.

Now, a lot of people wouldn’t like the way I worded that. What I’m supposed to say to describe Julia’s predicament, has been established long ago. I’m supposed to decorate my description of Julia with meaningless platitudes like these (link requires registration)…

The latest Sacramento resident to be questioned by federal agents in possible threats against President Bush is a 14-year-old girl with a heart on her backpack and braces on her teeth, a freckle-nosed adolescent who is passionate about liberal politics and cute movie stars.

Her name is Julia Wilson, and she learned a vivid civics lesson Wednesday when two Secret Service agents pulled her out of biology class at McClatchy High School to ask about comments and images she posted on MySpace.

Beneath the words “Kill Bush,” Julia posted a cartoonish photo-collage of a knife stabbing the hand of the president. It was one of a few images Julia said she used to decorate an anti-Bush Web page she moderated on MySpace, the social networking Web site that is hugely popular among teenagers. [emphasis mine]

The name of the anti-Bush web page, according to the article, is “‘People who want to stab Bush‘ — Julia said she doesn’t remember the exact name because she soon changed it.” Gee, how adorable. Like a heart on a backpack, or freckles or something. Anyway, I’m supposed to just ease you into all this stuff. She didn’t “threaten to kill the President,” she posted some kind of photoshop caricature of the President being stabbed with a knife, and insinuated that a passion for stabbing the President is a prerequisite for joining her group. Threatening to kill the President…that’s just a concise summary of the situation that’s utterly compatible with all known facts. How unfair of me.

Julia has become something of a martyr for a whole anthology of liberal concerns: Our vanishing civil liberties that nobody anywhere can put into a meaningful list, President Bush’s contempt for cute freckle-faced children with hearts on their backpacks, the rapidly declining level of discourse in the country for which they blame everyone except themselves, etc.

Julia’s father, Jim Moose, had this to say yesterday about the brouhaha his daughter has stirred up in an op-ed:

Sadly, I had expected such highly partisan reactions, which were completely predictable in the currently poisonous political atmosphere in this country. My wife and I agree that Julia’s behavior was wrong, and deserved to be sanctioned. Believe me, she has learned her lesson. As to the charge that we should have carefully monitored her MySpace page, we respectfully disagree.

We know our kids better than anyone else, and because they are all good kids — Julia has two siblings — we have chosen to respect their personal privacy on such matters, although we have been diligent in warning them that human predators inhabit the Internet. Had we realized that the Secret Service was reading her MySpace page, perhaps we might have paid more attention.

To my mind, our policy of giving our kids some “space” in which to learn from their own mistakes does not make us “neglectful parents.” The charge is particularly absurd as directed to Kirstie, who despite great intelligence and talents that could have launched her into a successful professional career, has instead chosen to stay at home the last 21 years to devote all of her energies to raising our children. I am intensely grateful to her for these efforts. She and I have the strong belief that we ought to treat our children as though we trust them, until they give us reason not to (which has happened on occasion). Thus, until this incident with the Secret Service, we saw Julia’s MySpace page as akin to a personal diary. We respected her privacy.

Now, this is just wombat-rabies bollywonkers crazy, assuming Jimbo really believes in it. But I don’t think he does. His command of the English language is at least adequate; he’s taken the time to anticipate the response of fellow Bush-bashing liberals, and cherry-pick the facts that would most assuredly get some kind of a rise out of them. Not exactly rocket-scientist stuff, but it takes something to do all that.

I just see knowing the difference between “private” and “Internet” as far, far below that. As in, being “shocked!,” Captain Renault like, that the Secret Service would be reading something posted on the web for all the world to see.