Dusty
2009-06-21 07:02:41 UTC
http://mensnewsdaily.com/sexandmetro/2009/06/20/obama-blames-men-for-father-absence-just-like-republicans-did/
Obama: Blames men for father-absence just like Republicans did
By David Usher | Jun 20, 2009
President Obama is playing the same alpha-male welfare-state game that
Republicans played since 1994 by blaming men for the demise of marriage and
fatherhood.
He refuses to acknowledge that tremendous sums of money baiting women to
have children out of wedlock and to "marry" the welfare state is the primary
driver of our social disaster.
"Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers - not the kind who must be
unearthed in the soul.
His finger-wagging is most pointed when addressing other black men,
reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single
mothers, but it applies to everyone.
Father's Day 2007: "Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out
there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that
responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes
you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a
child."
Father's Day 2008: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a
father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father."
Father's Day 2009: "We need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We
need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and
listening to them, and understanding what's going on in their lives."
Men: Obama is not your savior. He is your persecutor-in-chief, no matter
what race you are.
Women: Obama is not your savior. He is baiting you into a life of poverty
and helplessness. Only marriage guarantees women support from their husband,
and they help they need building and maintaining successful household.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31442612/ns/politics-white_house/
Obama makes responsible dads a priority
President turns Father's Day into ritual about fatherhood
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama got a basketball, his first name and ambition from
his father. Little else.
The son gave back more than he received: a lifetime of ruminations about the
man who abandoned the family, a memoir named "Dreams from My Father," and
endless reflections on his own successes and shortcomings as a parent of
Sasha, 8, and Malia, 10.
As a candidate and now president, he's been telling men what sort of father
they should be. It's become his Father's Day ritual and he's not shy about
it.
He's asking American men to be better fathers than his own.
The president showcased fatherhood in a series of events and a magazine
article in advance of Father's Day. He said he came to understand the
importance of fatherhood from its absence in his childhood homes - just as
an estimated 24 million Americans today are growing up without a dad.
Fathers run deep in the political culture as they do everywhere else, for
better and worse. Michelle Obama has said many times how her late dad,
Fraser, is her reference point and rock - she checks in with him, in her
mind, routinely, and at important moments.
Obama's presidential rival, John McCain, called his own memoirs "Faith of My
Fathers," tracing generations of high-achieving scamps. The father-son
presidencies of the George Bushes were bookends on Bill Clinton, whose
father drowned in a ditch before he was born and whose stepfather was an
abusive alcoholic nicknamed Dude.
A Kenyan goatherder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships
and Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. left a family behind to get his
schooling in the U.S.. He started another family here, then left his second
wife and 2-year-old Barack Jr. to return to Africa with another woman.
His promise flamed out in Africa after stints working for an oil company and
the government; he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was
21, a student at Columbia University.
"I don't want to be the kind of father I had," the president is quoted as
telling a friend in a new book about him.
His half-sister, Maya, called his memoirs "part of the process of excavating
his father."
Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers - not the kind who must be
unearthed in the soul.
His finger-wagging is most pointed when addressing other black men,
reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single
mothers, but it applies to everyone.
Father's Day 2007: "Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out
there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that
responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes
you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a
child."
Father's Day 2008: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a
father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father."
Father's Day 2009: "We need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We
need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and
listening to them, and understanding what's going on in their lives."
He doesn't hold himself out as the ideal dad. No driven politician can.
"I know I have been an imperfect father," he writes in Sunday's Parade
magazine. "I know I have made mistakes. I have lost count of all the times,
over the years, when the demands of work have taken me from the duties of
fatherhood."
He volunteered for those demands, as all people do when they want power. His
years as a community organizer, Illinois lawmaker, U.S. senator and
presidential candidate often kept him apart from family.
At the same time, he went to great lengths in the 2008 campaign to find time
with his girls and wife, and now considers the routine family time one of
the joys of living and working in the White House.
The new book "Renegade" by Richard Wolffe recounts strains in the marriage
early this decade, arising from his absences and from what Michelle Obama
apparently considered his selfish careerism at the time. The author
interviewed the Obamas, friends and associates.
Obama himself attributed his "fierce ambitions" to his dad while crediting
his mother - a loving but frequently absent figure - with giving him the
means to pursue them.
"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his
father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes," he once wrote,
"and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything
else." By malady, he meant the will to achieve.
Obama was a schoolboy in Hawaii when his father came back to visit. He gave
his dad a tie. His father gave him a basketball and African figurines and
came to his class to speak about Kenya. He was an impressive, mysterious
figure whom Obama found compelling, volatile and vaguely threatening.
The visit took a sour turn when Obama went to watch "How the Grinch Stole
Christmas" and his father made him shut off the TV, saying he watched too
much. Obama slammed the bedroom door; a loud argument ensued among
grown-ups.
Not the quality time Obama has in mind in asking dads to turn off the TV
now.
Obama: Blames men for father-absence just like Republicans did
By David Usher | Jun 20, 2009
President Obama is playing the same alpha-male welfare-state game that
Republicans played since 1994 by blaming men for the demise of marriage and
fatherhood.
He refuses to acknowledge that tremendous sums of money baiting women to
have children out of wedlock and to "marry" the welfare state is the primary
driver of our social disaster.
"Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers - not the kind who must be
unearthed in the soul.
His finger-wagging is most pointed when addressing other black men,
reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single
mothers, but it applies to everyone.
Father's Day 2007: "Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out
there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that
responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes
you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a
child."
Father's Day 2008: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a
father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father."
Father's Day 2009: "We need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We
need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and
listening to them, and understanding what's going on in their lives."
Men: Obama is not your savior. He is your persecutor-in-chief, no matter
what race you are.
Women: Obama is not your savior. He is baiting you into a life of poverty
and helplessness. Only marriage guarantees women support from their husband,
and they help they need building and maintaining successful household.
----------------------------------------------------------
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31442612/ns/politics-white_house/
Obama makes responsible dads a priority
President turns Father's Day into ritual about fatherhood
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama got a basketball, his first name and ambition from
his father. Little else.
The son gave back more than he received: a lifetime of ruminations about the
man who abandoned the family, a memoir named "Dreams from My Father," and
endless reflections on his own successes and shortcomings as a parent of
Sasha, 8, and Malia, 10.
As a candidate and now president, he's been telling men what sort of father
they should be. It's become his Father's Day ritual and he's not shy about
it.
He's asking American men to be better fathers than his own.
The president showcased fatherhood in a series of events and a magazine
article in advance of Father's Day. He said he came to understand the
importance of fatherhood from its absence in his childhood homes - just as
an estimated 24 million Americans today are growing up without a dad.
Fathers run deep in the political culture as they do everywhere else, for
better and worse. Michelle Obama has said many times how her late dad,
Fraser, is her reference point and rock - she checks in with him, in her
mind, routinely, and at important moments.
Obama's presidential rival, John McCain, called his own memoirs "Faith of My
Fathers," tracing generations of high-achieving scamps. The father-son
presidencies of the George Bushes were bookends on Bill Clinton, whose
father drowned in a ditch before he was born and whose stepfather was an
abusive alcoholic nicknamed Dude.
A Kenyan goatherder-turned-intellectual who clawed his way to scholarships
and Harvard, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. left a family behind to get his
schooling in the U.S.. He started another family here, then left his second
wife and 2-year-old Barack Jr. to return to Africa with another woman.
His promise flamed out in Africa after stints working for an oil company and
the government; he fell into drink and died in a car crash when his son was
21, a student at Columbia University.
"I don't want to be the kind of father I had," the president is quoted as
telling a friend in a new book about him.
His half-sister, Maya, called his memoirs "part of the process of excavating
his father."
Obama now cajoles men to be better fathers - not the kind who must be
unearthed in the soul.
His finger-wagging is most pointed when addressing other black men,
reflecting years of worry about the fabric of black families and single
mothers, but it applies to everyone.
Father's Day 2007: "Let's admit to ourselves that there are a lot of men out
there that need to stop acting like boys; who need to realize that
responsibility does not end at conception; who need to know that what makes
you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise a
child."
Father's Day 2008: "Any fool can have a child. That doesn't make you a
father. It's the courage to raise a child that makes you a father."
Father's Day 2009: "We need to step out of our own heads and tune in. We
need to turn off the television and start talking with our kids, and
listening to them, and understanding what's going on in their lives."
He doesn't hold himself out as the ideal dad. No driven politician can.
"I know I have been an imperfect father," he writes in Sunday's Parade
magazine. "I know I have made mistakes. I have lost count of all the times,
over the years, when the demands of work have taken me from the duties of
fatherhood."
He volunteered for those demands, as all people do when they want power. His
years as a community organizer, Illinois lawmaker, U.S. senator and
presidential candidate often kept him apart from family.
At the same time, he went to great lengths in the 2008 campaign to find time
with his girls and wife, and now considers the routine family time one of
the joys of living and working in the White House.
The new book "Renegade" by Richard Wolffe recounts strains in the marriage
early this decade, arising from his absences and from what Michelle Obama
apparently considered his selfish careerism at the time. The author
interviewed the Obamas, friends and associates.
Obama himself attributed his "fierce ambitions" to his dad while crediting
his mother - a loving but frequently absent figure - with giving him the
means to pursue them.
"Someone once said that every man is trying to either live up to his
father's expectations or make up for his father's mistakes," he once wrote,
"and I suppose that may explain my particular malady as well as anything
else." By malady, he meant the will to achieve.
Obama was a schoolboy in Hawaii when his father came back to visit. He gave
his dad a tie. His father gave him a basketball and African figurines and
came to his class to speak about Kenya. He was an impressive, mysterious
figure whom Obama found compelling, volatile and vaguely threatening.
The visit took a sour turn when Obama went to watch "How the Grinch Stole
Christmas" and his father made him shut off the TV, saying he watched too
much. Obama slammed the bedroom door; a loud argument ensued among
grown-ups.
Not the quality time Obama has in mind in asking dads to turn off the TV
now.