^ I don't necessarily disagree, but I also don't see the *justification* for all the public focus on this one teenager's vulgarities (in an all-around vulgar flame war) out of all the other shit that's out there on Facebook. If you have, say, a 15-year-old daughter, and you overhear her referring to some classmate she's had an altercation with as a "faggot," then you have what's in a sense the luxury of being able to put a full stop to it right there--you can sit her down and have a long talk with her about the history of the word, what kind of people use it, what kind of damage it's done, and so on. And yes, you should've had this discussion with her long before, but at least it's come to your attention and you're addressing it now. But what if you're a well-known public figure and your daughter said it on Facebook instead, and now it's being relayed in articles and blogs and TV all over the place, and people are pouncing on it both to blast you as a hypocrite for your claims to be raising your children with the values of fairness and justice or whatever, as well as denouncing your child's character and sneering about what a stupid, bigoted little shit she is? That's not the way for her to grasp what makes slurs wrong, and it's unlikely you'll be in the best frame of mind to address it with her at that point, either. And who knows how long this incident might follow either or both of you around? Becoming a mature adult, and getting due credit for becoming one, does take some space and privacy; it's a problem if you're regularly having to deal with much bigger fallout from your moments of recklessness, stupidity, or just plain wrongness than we'd normally expect teenagers to be hit with.
It's not really even about this case specifically; just the general problem raised by the public at large being able to watch and react to what teenagers perceive as their private behavior, often even before the parents know about it. Some of the things (several of) these kids said were really wrong, no doubt about that, but I'm also uncomfortable with the fact that people were watching and waiting to make a spectacle of it in the first place, just because it's Willow Palin. Like I said upthread, from a parent's perspective, it does raise some troubling questions about the extent of your accountability for what your kids say online.
Also, it seems like some of these kids know each other.
