Putting a Face on the Opinion

I'm sure there are plenty of people who disagree with me on this, but I really like the occasional political status update on Facebook. I certainly don't want a steady diet of them--I'd rather know that your kids are going back to school or your opinion of Inglourius Basterds--but it's good to know where people stand on this and that.

This is particularly true of the stuff I don't agree with. Personally, I think it's silly to fret about political indoctrination when the President is going to deliver a stay-in-school message to kids. Especially since that ship has pretty well sailed: Bush addressed children with his "Freedom Agenda," for instance, and I don't think anyone said boo. And ABC's Jake Tapper reminds us that Reagan spoke about opposition to gun control to school kids back in 1988... presumably without any permission slips being signed. Not that the administration did a great job promoting this one: as Kevin Drum points out, the original phrasing of an after-speech activity ("Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals") was sure to raise some eyebrows.

Anyway, the purpose of that tanget is to illustrate one of those fairly inconsequential things that people disagree on for a little while and then forget about. But one of my Facebook friends put up a status report saying she didn't want people talking to her kids with one of their parents present without their permission. Which sounds fairly reasonable--laudable, even--until you realize that it's not like they personally vet every bus driver and cafeteria worker, or the countless other adults that come in contact with their children every day at school. They trust the school to do that. I'm willing to bet that the school will vouch for the president, the same as it does for Lunchlady Doris. So what's the prob?

But again, I'm off on a tangent. Facebook statuses: What I like about seeing these statuses is it forces me to not stereotype the people I disagree with. It's very easy to fall back on the idea that everyone who disagrees with you is either criminal or stupid in these times; I know I've been guilty of that myself on occasion. But it's very, very good to get a reminder that some of these people are our friends, our co-workers, our family members, our old school buddies, our neighbors. If we can all just ease up and give each other a little bit more of the benefit of the doubt, if we can all just refrain from pointing fingers, we might not get them bitten off.

Rob