'Facebook Dad' ready to move on

Tommy Jordan, the Stanly County father who responded to his teenage daughter's Facebook rant with an eight-minute YouTube rant of his own, says he is preparing to "move on" with his life.

We use the word "says" guardedly, because Jordan has declined - throughout the whirlwind of publicity resulting from a YouTube post that has garnered almost 22 million hits - to speak with the media.

Instead, he is doing what his 15-year-old daughter did when she complained that her parents had turned her into a slave by requiring her to do chores - he's circumventing the media and communicating to his followers and detractors with Facebook.

In a post yesterday, Jordan said, "In a couple of days, whether the world at large has moved on or not, I'm going to."

Jordan, who lives outside the Albemarle city limits, became a world-wide sensation when he posted the YouTube video in which he answered his daughter's complaints and finished by using a handgun to pepper the girl's laptop computer with bullets.

The video went viral, and it brought news media from around the country to Jordan's house.

It also brought the Stanly County Sheriff's Office and Child Protective Services, Jordan wrote in a Facebook post. He said both agencies came to talk with him and his daughter, and he said he allowed a woman from Child Protective Services to speak individually with his daughter.  They found no problems, Jordan wrote.

Otherwise, what little has emerged about this Stanly County dad has come from Facebook.

He and his wife have two children, the daughter and an 8-year-old boy. Jordan is an ex-Marine, and he works with an information technology company. Oh, yes ... he has a collection of firearms.

The Stanly County Sheriff's Office says there is nothing to investigate. Albemarle police tried to distance themselves from the whole incident. In the video, Jordan says police supported his position. Initially, Jordan was described as being from Albemarle, but the police department issued a statement over the weekend, saying the video did not reflect the department's philosophy, and noting that Jordan lives outside the city limits.

Jordan has declined all requests for interviews, including those from the Observer. In a Facebook post, he wrote, "I just had a friend run Good Morning America (the ABC show) off my lawn."

He has used the media furor to help the Muscular Dystrophy Association and said on Monday followers had raised more than $5000.

Some of the pronouncements from Jordan on his Facebook page:

His parenting skills: "I'm not a super-dad, or awesome parent. I'm a normal guy with a reasonable moral compass that I try very hard to keep pointed north. I make a lot of mistakes."

Others' parenting skills: " 'Modern' parenting raises ill-prepared kids who can't do anything and have no skills because they're protected from even learning them until 18 years old, at which time you want us parents to throw them out into the world, send them off to college, and expect them to be productive members of society? You can take your 'modern' parenting, and shove it. Half of you think chores at 15 are too much!"

Why he won't talk to the media: "We don't need a talk show. If we decide to share something with the world, we've learned that my digital cmaera does just as effective a job as an NBC/CBS/ABC (and to hell with Fox, who can't get anything right) film crew, and takes less headache. And we control the way it gets portrayed."

On his critics: "We're gonna turn the lights out on the frenzy of maniancs who want to hurl insults at us. If you don't like my wall, there's a quick way to unsubscribe. I'd suggest doing it now."

On why he uses Facebook: "Facebook is a marketing medium for my business and for myself, so I'm going back to that, whether some of these bored Tommy-hating people have better things to do or not."