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Father reacts to Secret Service questioning his duaghter

by Trench Reynolds on October 22nd, 2006

A question of judgment:
This article was written by the father of Julia Wilson, the Sacramento teen who was questioned by the Secret Service after posting a graphic that said “Kill Bush” on her MySpace�

All of our friends, who know what a sweet, if spunky and spirited, child Julia is found the whole episode to be absurd. How could the Secret Service possibly see her as a threat to the president? Yes, Julia is inclined to use dramatic verbiage — she hates peanut butter, for example — but she obviously would never seriously advocate killing another human being.

Apples and oranges my friend.

And why would anyone think that images and words in a MySpace page used as a forum for teenaged chatter were intended to reach the president himself and put him on notice that a squad of pimply middle-school assassins from Sacramento was on the march toward Washington?

The Secret Service has to investigate any perceived threat against the office of the President of the United States.

Numerous individuals characterized my wife and me as permissive and worthless parents, or characterized Julia as a treasonous, snotty-nosed little brat who was either too young to be entitled to political opinions, or was merely parroting Bush hatred that we had pounded into her brain.

I wouldn’t say worthless but I would definitely say lax.

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.

I highly doubt the Secret Service had been monitoring your daughter’s MySpace. More than likely the Secret Service received a tip from somebody who came across your daughter’s MySpace.

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.

That was your first mistake. Just because you’re checking up on your kid’s MySpace doesn’t mean you don’t trust them. 14-year-olds don’t always have the mental maturity to make the best decisions. If you occasionally peeked in on her MySpace activities this probably wouldn’t even be an issue.

The most disillusioning thing about our recent experience is that it has proved to us all too starkly how ready, and even anxious, many people are to judge others harshly without sufficient evidence to form thoughtful opinions, and how truly mean some people are. I attribute these revelations in part to human nature, and in part to the degraded status of our political culture. I note that President Bush uses the verb “kill” all the time with respect to “evildoers” whose humanity he refuses to acknowledge. I note, too, that our governor achieved his fame through a series of movies in which he methodically slaughtered seemingly hundreds of one-dimensional enemies.

My family and I long for political leadership that will try to restore civilized discourse in this country. Such leadership would set a fine example for our daughter, Julia, who, in her choice of words, may have unconsciously mimicked the style of our nation’s politicians and entertainers. Please forgive her for using the word “kill.” As her loving father, I assure you that she did not mean it.

You complain about the partisanship involved in the attacks against your daughter then you turn around and make your own partisan attack. Which makes your argument that your daughter reached her political opinions uninfluenced suspect.

About the writer:

* Jim Moose is a land use and environmental attorney based in Sacramento.

That right there speaks volumes.

People being questioned by the Secret Service for perceived threats against the President of the United States isn’t something that started with the election of President Bush. People have been questioned in each administration for making threats against the president as long as I’ve been alive from LBJ to the current president and yes even during the Clinton administration. The only difference now is with the proliferation of the internet within the past decade we hear about them quicker.

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