
 |
|
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
June 25, 2008
/ 22 Sivan 5768
Could we talk honestly about this?
By
Paul Greenberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
We all knew Barack Obama was quite the rhetorician, and once again he's demonstrated his way with words and not just words but thought. It happened when he was called on to deliver a Father's Day sermon at a largely black church on Chicago's South Side.
It could have been just another ceremonial occasion at the Apostolic Church of G-d, and just another appearance on a presidential candidate's crowded speaking schedule. Instead, the senator used the occasion to issue a moral challenge. Because this guest speaker had come not to praise the American father but to ask where he'd gone.
Barack Obama, U.S. senator and family man, could have delivered another routine paean to what the pollsters and political consultants have labeled Family Values, thereby reducing them to a standard political shtick. Instead, Barack Obama recalled his own fatherless childhood, and how his grandparents stepped in to provide support, guidance, love in short, family.
As he pointed out: "A lot of children don't get those chances. There is no margin for error in their lives." And no father to step in and do what dads are supposed to do, which is a lot.
That's when Barack Obama took aim at all those who want to blame the declining state of the American family, particularly the black family, on handy scapegoats like Social Injustice, the Legacy of Slavery and Segregation, and all too painfully on rather than working to overcome all that history family by family, father by father:
"We can't simply write these problems off to past injustices," Sen. Obama told his listeners. "Those injustices are real. There's a reason our families are in disrepair ... but we can't keep using that as an excuse."
Too many glib demagogues have done just that. And in making excuses, they have obscured the devotion of those fathers and grandfathers who embody the best of the past and therefore nurture the future. See Clarence Thomas' moving memoir of his grandfather ("My Grandfather's Son"), and the strength, independence, and iron will the old man passed on to a young boy who is now an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States with a mind, will and character of his own.
In his book, Justice Thomas recalls how he and his brother bristled at the discipline and high expectations that this older, largely uneducated but utterly self-reliant black man in tiny Pinpoint, Ga., imposed on his grandsons. Any boys would resist such a regimen, being boys. For in his grandfather's house, it was all work by day and all study after the sun set and maybe before it arose, too.
Young Clarence did not fully understand what his grandfather was giving him, not then, for he was a child and saw as a child. "But as I grew older," Mr. Justice Thomas writes now, and "made my own way in the world, and raised a son, I came to appreciate what I had not understood as a child: I had been raised by the greatest man I have ever known."
How we need not just such paternal models, but fathers of all styles and persuasions. For there are different ways of being a good father, which first means being a good husband, and then being there for the kids. Last Sunday, Father's Day, Barack Obama had the candor to point to the man who isn't there in too many American "families" today. Good for him.
Perhaps someday someone, even a presidential candidate with much to lose by being candid, will rise on Mother's Day and point out that bringing children into the world without a father to complete the family, and to help rear and provide for the next generation, also helps explain what's wrong with much of American society. And why so many of our children are being raised, as Sen. Obama put it, with no margin for error.
Let's not overlook maternal irresponsibility, either, or make excuses for it. It merits the same kind of moral indictment that Barack Obama, to popular applause and general approbation last week, drew up against the absentee father.
Single young mothers and their children need all the support and guidance their families and society can provide. But so do young, vulnerable girls little more than children themselves in a sociey where all the forces of vulgar fashion and the omnipresent media conspire to turn adolescents into sexpots.
In this latest age of sexual liberation (mainly for the male of the species) we need to transmit the age-old wisdom of the species what used to be called mother wit to each generation. Namely, the fundamental importance of the marital and family bond.
The Victorians understood the centrality of the family in the nation. So did the Puritans before them, and on back to the sayings of Confucius and the detailed statutes and ordinances of the Torah. But man forgets the old lessons, and children pay the price. So does society in general.
Excuses are a luxury that those concerned about the American family can no longer afford. Freedom, independence, character like so many good things, those begin at home. With families. And with responsible fathers and mothers.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Paul Greenberg, editorial page editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, has won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial writing. Send your comments by clicking here.
Paul Greenberg Archives
© 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|