President Obama has launched the very corny “Fatherhood Buzz” campaign. He discussed it at a photo-op lunch with two D.C.-area barbers and two servicemen (Obama’s military pandering isn’t getting enough notice in the press):
And then the reason the two older gentlemen are here is, as I was mentioning, barbershops are where a lot of men go — and we want to work with them — we want to work with barbershops to figure out how we can get better information to fathers about resources that are available to them so they can find job training programs; they can find support groups for fathers. Because the more information we’re getting out there to folks about how they could take responsibility for their kids, make sure that they’re in their child’s lives, help support their mother even if they’re not living with the mother, makes a huge difference.
In reality, most men go to SuperCuts and get their hair trimmed by a chick with a wrist tattoo and three different colors in her hair. Really there is only one group of men for whom a trip to the barber shop is a social event. That’s perfectly fine. They’re the group that could benefit from this initiative the most.
It turns out that with the father being involved, the kids are less likely to do drugs, they’re less likely to — girls are less likely to get pregnant. And so that message is something that we want to make sure gets out there. And barbershops are a good place to do it, so that’s where everybody hangs out — right?
Yes, after years and years of painstaking research *it turns out*, oddly enough and beyond our wildest expectations, that an involved father is good for children. Perhaps I’m being too harsh in my interpretation of Obama’s phrasing. But on that note, and as Jeannie DeAngelis also points out, Obama backs the father-mother dyad over the father-father or mother-mother models.
It’s also a testament to a deep cultural perversion that a silly initiative called “Fatherhood Buzz” which is replete with suggestions to fathers about fun questions that they should prod their kids with is supposed to reintroduce fathers with what was once a pretty organic thing. I think that we used to know that fathers are a good thing. That kids are less likely to do stupid things when fathers are around. We used to know that, but then we unlearned it and now Obama will teach us again.
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I’m visualizing Eddie Murphy’s “Coming to America”. I’m sure this Fatherhood Buzz will turn things around.
“I think that we used to know that fathers are a good thing.”
You Millenials missed the eighties, during which time anti-father Kulturkampf was strong. The molester dad was a huge theme during that time — sort of like gay marriage is now. It was in the air, people in my local paper wrote letters to the editor saying how they’re afraid to hug their kids in public. There was a sub-industry within the psychiatric profession that specialized in “uncovering” suppressed memories of a sexually abusive father.
It began in earnest circa 1984 with a made-for-television movie “Something about Emily.”
(continuing)
It began in earnest circa 1984 with a made-for-television movie “Something about Emilia.”
This continued for the next ten years, with virtually every pop culture artifact that had to do with family being colored by the de-rigeur abusive-dad meme. You then had Aerosmith’s “Janie’s got a Gun,” and finally the molester dad in the superficially-conservative “Forrest Gump.”
Thankfully, this cultural phenomenon had run its course and you don’t see it anymore. PC has shifted to other subjects. An Obama extolling the virtues of fatherhood would have been impossible in an age of Murphy Brown. Even if today”s official pro-fatherhood messages are compromised by a “man-up” element in their rhetoric, this still beats the cultural horror of fifteen years ago.
I don’t know much about black culture, but the black-barbershop-as-mens’-social-club may be a little dated. A certain subset of black males has the short hair that requires weekly haircuts, but how many? Obama sells images because he believes in images.
In order to criticize black American and the lack of fathers, you need to do it without criticizing the demonization of fathers – because the demonization of fathers is still official policy.
I don’t know much about black culture, but the black-barbershop-as-mens’-social-club may be a little dated. A certain subset of black males has the short hair that requires weekly haircuts, but how many? Obama sells images because he believes in images.
Obama is trying to reach black male voters. It’s not as if they can be found in proximity to their kids, so he’s looking in the places where they can actually be found – like barber shops.
What a lot of black men do, that is so detrimental to black kids, is to not be part of their children’s lives at all. A relationship with a less than ideal father, is still far preferable to no relationship at all.
This is the kind of message that does need to be driven home for black and lower class men. They do tend to have trouble handling fatherhood responsibilities. The encouragement can’t hurt. Maybe we should even offer some financial incentive. Possibly consider time spend with kids a form of child support.
@PA
going further on the 80′s, there was the whole campaign of “if somebody touches you and it feels funny, tell someone.” at school they pushed this a lot with an emphasis on it feeling “funny.” that was the word. i even remember a case on 20/20 were an albanian immigrant couple was interviewed; they had their kids taken away and given to another family because some busybody TV-watching hag thought that the father was holding his kids to close and what not.
I wonder how much things like job training programs can help black guys with an average IQ of 85. We would probably be better off if they had fewer children to begin with. Only someone with a middle class income should be having large families, not the inner city black guy who’s gone around and impregnated several women. You won’t ever see Obama or any liberal suggesting that. GLP, I was a libertarian but felt that, unlike most libertarians, that having a free market economy was a necessary but not sufficient condition for having a wealthy country. The intelligence of the population is important too and that’s partly genetic and only HBD writers seem to understand that. I think some HBD believers, though, think genetics is everything and you can’t improve black behavior and that leads to despair that things can’t be improved among some HBD supporters. It’s this despair and gloom that things will only get worse that I can’t agree with. I think the welfare state does encourage bad black behavior because prior to it blacks had a much higher marriage rate, lower illegitimacy rate and lower crime rate. So blacks may never be as successful as whites but eliminating the welfare state would improve things. Bad ideas can be discredited, as the collapse of communism in Russia and China showed, and I think the liberalism is on the verge of collapse in this country.
I wonder how much things like job training programs can help black guys with an average IQ of 85.
Not much in our modern economy, in which the good paying jobs put a premium clear communication, punctuality and polite cooperation. Positions involving any type of service or interactivity are not a good fit for them, and black females are leaving them behind. Black males were much better off during the days of the steel mill and assembly line, since nowadays the manual labor jobs are going to Mexican immigrants who worker harder, show up on time and know how to keep their mouth shut.
Sticking around to be involved in your children’s lives is genetic.
Some percentage of all fathers will skip out and use an r strategy rather than a k strategy.
That percentage happens to be much larger among blacks because that was a successful in Africa.
The r stategy probably worked in Africa because it had a warmer climate that was easier to survive in. Transplanted to a colder climate, it shouldn’t work but has so far by transferring economic resources from whites to blacks via the government. Without the whites around, it doesn’t work here. I visited Detroit in 1965 as a child and again recently. Since the last time I was there, it looks like an atom bomb was dropped on it. It wasn’t an atom bomb; the whites just left.
Ronald Rohmer of the University of Connecticut has made news this week for publishing a study concluding that fathers are at least as important as mothers, and perhaps more important, in bringing up their children to be happy and productive adults.
This is apparently news.
Nevertheless, I was shocked to see it in the headlines, because it’s not politically correct for the media to say these things. I was less surprised when I read further. The spin put on it by Rohmer himself, if he’s being correctly quoted, is that he hopes it will stop mothers being blamed for the failures of their children. So normal, politically correct, service is being resumed.
“to figure out how we can get better information to fathers about resources that are available to them so they can find job training programs; they can find support groups for fathers. Because the more information we’re getting out there to folks about how they could take responsibility for their kids, make sure that they’re in their child’s lives, help support their mother even if they’re not living with the mother, makes a huge difference.”
The Government – is there anything it CAN’T do?
Seriously, what kind of screw-ups need someone else to provide this sort of information for them?
And where was all this fatherhood buzz when Obama came up with the Life of Julia?
(In case you’ve forgotten: http://www.barackobama.com/life-of-julia)
This story recently made the local news:
http://wreg.com/2012/06/13/memphis-man-owes-child-support-to-15-women/
20+ kids between 15 different women. Our society has allowed this man to be more successful reproductively than the last 10 nobel prize winning physicists combined. Deep down all people know that this is NOT good for our future as a species, but everyone is afraid to say it.
The drop in levels of reproduction among desirable people and the spike in levels of reproduction among undesirable people is the single most important issue of this time, because it determines our future more than anything else. It is much more important than global warming. It is much more important than even the economy. Until we are allowed to discuss fact openly, our future looks pretty bleak.
Maobama – sucking up to black barbershops? For votes even?
Now,this, is truly outrageous!
“20+ kids between 15 different women. Our society has allowed this man to be more successful reproductively than the last 10 nobel prize winning physicists combined. Deep down all people know that this is NOT good for our future as a species, but everyone is afraid to say it.”
Well said.
Hear, hear PA!
I’ve never heard it said before
how badly bad it is for coloreds to
pop out kids by the dozens over decades!
It really is not root-ootilly-good!
Come on FP, you’ve gone from a wry and inscrutable man of mystery who speaketh in blank verse to a babbling homeless guy. I used to like your short comments and didn’t understand what all the “ban-firepower” fuss was all about. One is supposed to be annoyed by trolls, not feel sorry for them.
No no, Firepower is brilliant leave her here. I can never get enoug of her snarky anti-whatever-glp-posts-about repartee. The way she so eloquently elucidates her own ideas is astounding and I find that I am learning a lot. Brilliant sweetie, just brilliant.
This is … I don’t know, funny. There are about 4 barbershops around here that are owned by old white guys (mainly Italian and Irish) and all you see in there are old white guys hanging out and socializing. A time to get away from the wives and kids. The minority owned male barbershops have a younger demographic, but they do the same thing. I don’t know one dude out here that goes to the local LemonTree or SuperCuts to get a cut – unless they’re like, 8 and don’t have a dad.
I was wondering if Obama would follow the little annual tradition he’s made of reminding fathers on Father’s Day that they’re still not good enough. Good to see he followed through.
Firepower, i’d love to see examples in mainstream media where they do talk about these things! I’m so glad you’re going to be able to link examples. It will be easy because it’s so common, right??
This is just a case of Obama/Axelrod thinking everyone is stupid and has no memory. He’s trying to pander to fathers now in some small way.
But over the last few years, he’s been pandering to women 100x harder. Lilly Ledbetter law, free birth control paid by employer, Life of Julia, gay marriage, fair pay act, it goes on and on.
It got to the point where I assumed the Democrats had utterly given up on the white male vote and were just pandering ultra-hard to ensure their coalition of POC/white women/gays would cancel out white men’s votes.
And now this jerkass wants to talk about fatherhood and men’s issues in any way? Sorry mr. messiah, we haven’t forgotten the last four years….
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