Wow, what a Facebook controversy

I am a Facebook user, and it is usually a way for me to connect with my friends, check in with what folks are doing today, look at photos and peruse some local headlines of newspaper pages I joined. So I was quite taken aback by the passion and vehemence that followed when I posted a story by azcentral.com on how some Arizona schools won't show President Barack Obama's speech about education this week.

I posted the link, and this comment:

Wow, some Arizona schools are banning Obama's speech.

What followed was a veritable maelstrom on a Facebook page. I have close to 300 friends from across the country. These include people from my many walks of life. A lot are former newspaper colleagues from five newspapers as well as family members from my side and my husband's. Most of my family are liberal democrats, whereas some of my husband's are right-wing republicans, some quite religious.

Normally politics doesn't enter my Facebook page. But I put it there. It is one of the joys of my layoff from newspapers after 27 years to feel free to be able to more publicly proclaim my views. As a reporter and editor, I often felt it my professional duty to maintain objectivity in the world, and had I been on Facebook during my career -- I wasn't, I discovered it after I was unemployed -- I would not have use it as a political forum.

No sooner had I put up the link and the comment than my sister-in-law immediately said she can understand why parents would not want their children watching the speech. This spurred aggressive comments from one of my most liberal journalist friends, who is now working in Florida, who labeled my relative's views "the epitome of ignorance."

Suddenly one of my  most conservative journalist friends, still in Arizona, was taking on my Florida friend, complete with links to stories of his own, and they were having at it for comment after comment. Surprisingly, another person I seldom hear from leapt in, a friend my children's school, and on it went.

I found myself in the role of moderator.  And I kind of liked it. It was what I used to do in my last job at azcentral.com, where I tried to find the most interesting stories and post them, and hope that readers would comment on them. Each time a reader comments it's a "click," and that is what we wanted.

In Arizona, a lot of schools are sending permission slips home with kids so parents can "opt out" of the president's speech. Some districts won't show the speech at all.

At one point,  this is what I wrote on the Facebook page. It is my opinion on the debate:

"I think the parents who are against having their kids listen also have no faith in the education system. The point of listening to a speech would be to educate the kids, no matter what the president talks about. Afterward it would be up to the teachers to help the kids put it into perspective.
Presidential speeches are by their very nature historical. Denying children a chance to listen to any sitting president is denying them a front row at history in the making."