'What if President Obama had used his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of fatherhood?'

_______________

Yet another idiot bashing the President for neglecting to say things that he's, in fact, said repeatedly . . .

from Jonathan Capehart at the WaPo blog: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2012/12/12/nothing-reluctant-about-first-father-obama/


In “The reluctant First Father,” my Post colleague Kathleen Parker takes President Obama to task for not “using his bully pulpit to emphasize the importance of a two-parent family, and especially of fathers, to children’s well-being.” She couldn’t be more wrong.

“The true story of fatherlessness in this country can’t be repeated often or forcefully enough,” Parker wrote. She went on to cite the high rate of out-of-wedlock births among African Americans. And she cited the controversy surrounding comments made by University of Texas law professor Lino Graglia on the BBC about how single-parent households put black and Latino children at a disadvantage.

Graglia’s head is on the block as various offended parties demand that he be punished for his observations. But imagine for a moment if Obama had said the same things. What if Obama had said, you know, African American kids are as smart as anybody else, but as a group, they are disadvantaged because about 70 percent are born out of wedlock? They are disadvantaged by neighborhoods and a community culture that are often bereft of healthy male role models.

If the president uttered these words, they would be embraced as irrefutable truths. Who knows how he might alter individual destinies through the simple act of articulating these crucial matters of the human experience.

But the president has uttered words very close to that on many occasions since moving into the White House. In fact, he’s said them so much so that some African Americans complained (erroneously) that Obama only saved his stern lectures on personal responsibility and fatherhood for them.


Obama brought his “we must do better” message to the dinner celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP in July 2009 in New York City.

Obama was more specific and more earnest about the role of fathers a month earlier in 2009 at a fatherhood town hall in the East Room of the White House . . .

At a Father’s Day event in 2010, Obama talked about the importance of being present in their children’s lives . . .
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-a-fathers-day-event)

In June 2011, the president stressed the importance of fatherhood during an address to military fathers and their families . . .
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/06/15/remarks-president-military-fathers-and-their-children)

And almost exactly a year later, the administration released a 30-page booklet on its work in “Promoting Responsible Fatherhood.”
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/fatherhood_report_6.13.12_final.pdf)


read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2012/12/12/nothing-reluctant-about-first-father-obama/




from June:

President Obama made an unscheduled barbecue run today to honor Father's Day and the military.

Obama lunched with two servicemen as well as a pair of Washington, D.C., barbers involved in the administration's effort to promote better fatherhood.

"These guys are also young fathers, and they're doing great," Obama said during the lunch at Kenny's BBQ Smokehouse in northeast Washington.

The "Fatherhood Buzz" program is "designed to reach out to dads with positive information through barbers and barber shops as a part of the administration's longstanding Fatherhood and Mentoring Initiative," said a White House statement.

It added that "each quarter will feature a different 'buzz' topic -- the topic for the first quarter is financial literary and job training, and information about these issues will be distributed through barbers to fathers around the country."

During the lunch -- which included a pair of barbers as well as military members -- Obama said, "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."


read: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/06/obama-salutes-fathers-day-with-military-lunch/1#.UMnIxKxNRWM