This Week's HuffPost Family Dinner Download: Willow Palin's Facebook Slurs Hit the Headlines

In her new book, The Family Dinner, Laurie David talks about the importance of families making a ritual of sitting down to dinner together, and how family dinners offer a great opportunity for meaningful discussions about the day's news. "Dinner," she says, "is as much about digestible conversation as it is about delicious food."

We couldn't agree more. So HuffPost has joined with Laurie to launch a new feature we're calling HuffPost Family Dinner Downloads. Every Friday afternoon, just in time for dinner, our editors highlight one of the most compelling news stories of the week -- stories that will spark a lively discussion among the whole family.

The family can gather around the laptop, smartphone, or iPad -- or just print out the post and pass it around the table. Each Dinner Download will end with a question or two that we hope will get everyone thinking and sharing their thoughts, feelings, and opinions.

* * *

This week, Willow Palin, the 16-year-old daughter of former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, found herself making headlines when she went on Facebook and wrote multiple posts attacking a schoolmate who had criticized her mom's new reality show.

Her Facebook messages, which were quickly picked up and widely reported by the media, contained multiple curse words and anti-gay slurs. Willow's older sister, Bristol, who also joined the online war of words, later offered an apology -- posted on Facebook, of course -- saying she and Willow "shouldn't have reacted to negative comments about our family."

What would you do if someone wrote something really mean about your mom? And what about the offensive slurs Willow and Bristol used? Are they ever okay -- even if you are really mad? Do you think it's more okay to say mean things about someone who is famous than someone who is not?

Another development: more and more employers are using social media such as Facebook and Twitter, along with sites like Google, to check out the online reputation of someone they are thinking of hiring. College admission officers are also looking online to see what they can find out about students who have applied to their schools.

Do you think most kids understand that what they put online can easily become public? Is it fair for colleges and employers to look you up online? Do you think we are making too many things public these days, including our most personal thoughts, feelings, information, and pictures -- or do you think that people who have grown up with Facebook and Twitter are just more open than people used to be?

To see last week's Family Dinner Download, click here.

Subscribe to receive HuffPost Family Dinner Downloads by email every Friday afternoon.

For more tips and recipes, check out The Family Dinner: Great Ways to Connect with Your Kids, One Meal at a Time by Laurie David and Kirstin Uhrenholdt.

Comments

[VOTER]

09:27 AM on 11/23/2010

The Palin daughters have showcased exactly what it must be like to be
sitting at their family's dinner table where there is an abundance of 
vulgarity, egocentrism and ignorance.
This year, if the DWTS Mirrorballed Trophy is their Thanksgiving Table Centerpiece, 
they can  look at themselves and smile their grifter grins. $$$$$$$$

[mlaiuppa]

02:03 AM on 11/22/2010

I doubt any family dinner discussion at the Palin household would deal with Bristol and Willow's behavior or verbal tirade on Facebook. The Palins are professional victims and blame is always laid on someone else's doorstep.

Should universities and employers check the internet? Sure. Any available resource. Should everyone be aware that the internet is forever and you better be careful what you put in "print"? yes.

Who is going to do that?

Parents can teach courtesy and manners but they fall short on the information literacy required for this sort of instruction.

So, like so much, it will fall to the schools. And who in the school will teach it? Well, most teachers aren't as internet savy. Don't blame them. Many don't have the up to date resources to be current and Facebook is just one of many social networking sites blocked by schools.

The teacher most qualified to deal with this is the teacher librarian. They not only have the additional media credential but may also have a masters in information and library science. They are the ones teaching research, how to avoid plagiarism, copyright infringement, citations, searching and evaluating sources. They are the natural teachers for social networking, privacy and other cautionary practices involving the internet.

The trouble being not every school has a librarian. And with the budget cuts, more and more schools are dropping their librarians first in an effort to balance already out of balance budgets.

So the responsibility is back on the parents.

[Halsey]

12:58 PM on 11/21/2010

our family dinners always ended in tears. dad was a brute. I so envy those with happy childhood memories; I don't know what they are.

[SAVEME]

09:15 AM on 11/23/2010

Ours too. We were not allowed to speak at the table.

[Jamie Schler]

02:14 AM on 11/21/2010

Did I misread the Facebook status that triggered such violent and aggressive statements from both Willow and Bristol? Seems to me it said: "Sarah Palin's Alaska is failing so hard right now." referrring to Sarah Palin's realtiy show, not to Palin herself. Neither was it "really mean" so your question "What would you do if someone wrote something really mean about your mom?" seems a little overboard. Personally I think both Bristol and Willow responded to this rather observant status update just like their mom responds to almost anything: with violence and hate, spewing venom. They are the most aggressive, paranoid, violent, defensive bunch of people I have ever seen, always drawing attention to themselves any way they can and dragging things into the boxing ring when it would all serve them better just to ignore it and say nothing. So maybe a better family table discussion based on this entire incident would be "is it right to make mountains out of molehills?" or "Is it right to react outrageously, aggressively and violently to a fairly innocent statement of opinion?" These girls have been so poorly raised....

[Ozark Homesteader]

09:35 AM on 11/21/2010

I agree 100%. I saw the comments and the responses of the Palin women. These women sound like they have never learned how to take valid criticism. I saw a bit of the show, with an open mind, and it was like watching a train wreck.

[johnnygoodwud]

09:05 PM on 11/21/2010

appears to run in the family. sister sarah has taught her daughters well.

[NomadicView]

05:07 AM on 11/20/2010

Has anybody heard anything about the Sarah Palin Christmas CD coming out in the first week of December? Looks like a perfect gift for your Grandma Grizzly. http://nomadicjoe.blogspot.com/2010/11/most-logical-next-step.html

[dutchgirl55]

06:58 PM on 11/21/2010

No thanks.

[Jdaddy1951]

10:05 PM on 11/19/2010

Most politicians spend enough time with their kids to teach them something about being in the public eye. The Palin kids are turning out awful because Sarah and Todd, like so many self-obsessed parents, are more focused on their own goals and are just leaving the kids to raise themselves, with the exception of poor little Trig, who I guess is being raised by nannies. The older kids seemed to have been raised by wild dogs ...

[KsWrangler]

10:10 PM on 11/19/2010

Or wild pigs. Looks like a lot of fun going on in the Palin threads, however I am boycotting them. I'm sick of her face.

Thanksgiving week: "Don't click on a Palin Story Week"

[Jdaddy1951]

10:17 PM on 11/19/2010

A nice challenge. I doubt if HuffPo's readers could fulfill the request, let alone its editorial staff.

[kiljoywazeer]

08:27 PM on 11/19/2010

Like my mother used to say, "If you play...you pay...so watch what you say."

[MerryW]

07:55 PM on 11/19/2010

Kids ( and some adults) have no concept of how and what public is when it come to FaceBook. Once said on the internet it is always there. Your mistakes are there For Ever. Face book is not a friend, it is a communication system to be sure but you might as well put what you say on a billboard on Times Square.
The children shooting back and fourth in this instance were very comfortable with their "sport" and that is sad. They are not being supervised, nor are they being given good example. They do not understand world wide and worse than that they showed no restraint.

I would not bring up Bristol and Willow at dinner. I would bring up the subject of : Kids and people new to the internet needing to be told about the definition of public and the meaning of the word s permanent and future. and that E-mail and internet etiquette are very important.
I would ask them for some examples they know of. That way they participate in the discussion and also I am learning more about their environment.

[Tazzie]

06:54 PM on 11/19/2010

I think the better discussion to have with your kids is this demonstrates why Reality TV is horrible and fame wh0ring is bad.

[Michael T Campbell]

06:51 PM on 11/19/2010

The Palin post aside. I have to say the dinner concept of the family together for a meal is a great idea. However in the busy ..I have something else to do world... it isn't easy to get everyone together each night for dinner. But I do think that a family as a family should designate a certain time a each week to talk to each other or about things in general. If you can swing it more than once a week then that would be even better. When I was a child woh these many years ago, we did all eat dinner together every night. But in fairness we didn't have nearly as many distraction as there are today. In fact we didn't even have a tv until we were in our early teens. But I do think that there should be more family time. I love getting the kids in the car where there is nothing to distract them and we can all participate in a conversation. I use to keep a book in the car of all kinds of questions about science, history, math or general knowledge and we would quiz ourselves as we went along. And it got to the point where the kids wanted to play even when we weren't in the car. Now those were fun times.

[Omomma]

11:20 PM on 11/19/2010

This works like a charm. We have 'dinner at Mom and Dad's' every Sunday, arrive 6:30-ish for snacks and cocktails, dinner around 7. After a few years, our children began to take over hosting dinner, so now it's only at our house about once a month. There are always extra diners too, as people tend to have friends who are traveling, moving, by themselves for one reason or another.

Our grandchildren are learning how to attend dinner--nice clothes, good manners, spend time 'circulating' to talk to different people. We're looking forward to the 'graduates' from the children's table.

We're not rich [retired on very low fixed income] nor are our children. But we do have a good time.

[Michael T Campbell]

09:02 AM on 11/20/2010

That is great Omomma. I think things would be more civilized if more families did that.

[IHateTheGOP]

06:36 PM on 11/19/2010

Where were these kids raised? By two immature people living off of hate?

[Michael T Campbell]

06:52 PM on 11/19/2010

sorry buddy but not a good post.

[stardustnine]

06:30 PM on 11/19/2010

A better question than..."What would you do if someone wrote something really mean about your mom? "

Is giving an opinion on a reality show one is watching an attack on the person or the show? Is it even an attack? Is it EVEN mean to say you , personally, think a show is a fail? How could a comment about the show be twisted into an attack on a person?

[IHateTheGOP]

06:38 PM on 11/19/2010

What did anyone write that was "really mean" about her mom there, 0 fans.

[NomadicView]

06:56 PM on 11/19/2010

That's the funny part. From what I gathered, he had written on his opinion OWN facebook account and Willow objected to it.
But let's face, who in that family is going to teach that girl how to rise above the pettiness that often surrounds you, and to handle yourself with dignity? Seriously who? The only time she sees her mom is probably on TV, babbling on Foxnews or between takes of her "reality" show.

[Tom Joad]

06:28 PM on 11/19/2010

...like I'm gonna talk about that at dinner...

[Redemption Song II]

06:27 PM on 11/19/2010

Mean Girls, 2.0