Unbeknownst to many other Americans, upwards of 26 million Americans have now watched a Youtube video created by one Tommy Jordan, a North Carolina father, an IT specialist and a potential reality show folk hero, in which he lectures his 15-year-old daughter about life in general and her life in particular.
The climax, and I mean climax, comes as he points his 45 at her laptop, lying on the patchy winter lawn outside his house, and shoots it full of nine exploding hollow-point bullets. As he fires into the laptop, he tells his daughter she now owes him not only for the $130 worth of software he spent six hours the day before installing for her, gratis, but also for the cost of the bullets themselves, “about a dollar apiece.” Nice touch.
Why did he do this? To teach his daughter a lesson.
What did she do that provoked this dramatic form of education?
She behaved like a rebellious, entitled, self-centered adolescent. In other words, she was just doing what comes naturally to many in their teens. Specifically, she chose to air her differences with her father on her Facebook wall in the mistaken belief that it was visible only to her FB friends. “To My Parents,” she’d written, and then unloaded her grievances.
What she didn’t take into account — hello? — is that her father is an IT guy. He got behind her firewall and produced a fire wall of his own — all over her laptop.
Or, to be accurate, her ex-laptop.
In a well-spoken, indignant rant that might remind some — in part — of one of the finer Monty Python skits ever (The Four Yorkshiremen), Mr. Jordan informs his daughter that when he was 15, he was not only in high school, but was also studying in college at the same time and had a two paying jobs and was a volunteer fireman. His daughter, whose only responsibilities in life, as he puts it, are to do a few household chores, which by his estimate, take well under ten minutes a day, get up in the morning, and get on the school bus.
Speaking for a generation of parents who had to lug heavy typewriters if they wanted to write anything that wasn’t hand-written, and had to put a dime, later upped to a quarter, into the coin slot of an invariably inconveniently-located pay phone in order to make a telephone call when not at home, Mr. Jordan’s indignation has spread across the land as did the most memorable line of the 1976 movie, Network, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” Although now, in 2012, that outrage is viral and on steroids, thanks to Youtube.
The Youtube has, unsurprisingly, sparked an avalanche of comments, the vast majority cheering him on as “Father of the Year,” another simply writing, “Justice.” A small minority of others ask bluntly, “Are you nuts?” and “This is how you teach your daughter a lesson?”
As of this writing, the video that first went live on February 8th has garnered 289,058 “likes” and 27,053 “dislikes.” The ayes definitely have it in the country at large.
Here on PJM? Only you can say.
h/t: Soccer Mom
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