Did you hear about Tommy Jordan, the pistol packin’ badass dad who became an overnight folk hero when he plugged his daughter’s laptop full of bullets and posted the video to You Tube and Facebook. Jordan was responding to his daughter’s Facebook post in which she whined about having to fetch the old man’s coffee and other grody chores.
Since her post was only intended to be read by her friends, Dad logged on under the family dog’s Facebook profile, finding a loophole in his daughter’s privacy settings. After reading his daughter’s rant, he loaded his .45 with some hollow-point bullets, grabbed her laptop and the family camcorder and went to the backyard to make viral video history. It’s the modern day equivalent of burning her diary in front of all of her friends.
My Twitter feed today is full of commentary both pro and con. Even with the bloodbath in Syria and the death of Whitney Houston, many of us have time to argue about Jordan’s parenting style. Meanwhile, Jordan has become something of a celebrity. He claims he’s already turned down offers for reality TV shows. Yes, the cops and Child Protective Services were both compelled to investigate, but they ended up congratulating Jordan on his old-fashioned parenting. Dad is certainly enjoying the limelight, judging from these highlights from his Facebook feed. Who knows. Maybe he’ll even run for office- he hates immigrants and wants to genocide North Korea. Look out, Santorum!
Jordan is also something of an expert in online privacy. Why, only a year ago, he wrote this awesome post about protecting your identity on Facebook. While Jordan is concerned about his own privacy, he’s particularly concerned about the privacy of his children. He writes:
Jordan goes on to explain the importance of having password access to your child’s Facebook account, and suggests that you “(d)on’t simply tell your children to update their privacy information. Do it yourself!”
This is all great advice. Now that the video in which he publicly humiliates his daughter has attracted over 15 million views, he might want to take it.