DADWAGON

Is this your kid's face on Newt Gingrich's body?

(This is the Tantrum, in which Dadwagon’s writers debate one question over the course of a week. For previous Tantrums, click here.)

I suppose the answer is … probably not, but who knows? Which isn’t really an answer and shouldn’t be read as such, but really as a jumping off point. In certain respects my esteemed Dadwagon colleagues have covered most of the bases (Matt: exploit away, me hearties; Christopher: never, it’s wrong, damn you—only on Facebook, which no one can look at, except everyone; Nathan: pure arrogance—”The other reason why I’m not that against putting our kids’ pictures online is because they are just more gorgeous than your kids”). So I think I’ll approach this from the perspective of the lone divorcé on the site.

In short, I don’t post young JP’s photo not, as Christopher worries about, because I have no consent from him, but rather, because I have no consent from the evil hag who (to her enduring credit) brought him into the world. Because she would kill me. Dead. And she knows how to do it, too. And maybe already has.

Unfortunately, this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule. I certainly write about JP (although using his nickname, not his real name), as well as about his mother (I don’t use her name, either). But that’s a slender thread upon which to hang one’s ethics, fragile enough, I would say, that those ethics could easily hang you.

Ultimately, I choose not to show JP on this site because it just doesn’t feel nice. That’s not much of a definable quantity, I know, and my nice bears no resemblance to the other Dadwagoners’. But it works for me … which is ultimately a fine lesson in parenting, wouldn’t you say?