Level 42-- To Be With You Again

Happy Father's Day to all the daddies out there! While I wait for my beloved to wake up to be spoiled by his children, let's look at what to expect this morning.

I imagine some version of this song plays somewhere in the head of the Sunday show bookers, because if it's Sunday...you guessed it, it's time for John McCain to gift us with his pearls of wisdom, this time on This Week with Christiane Amanpour. And guess who else will be on? None other than Liz Cheney. Oh, I've missed them so much! If those aren't enough familiar faces for you, you can always check Lindsey Graham on Meet the Press or Mitch McConnell on Face the Nation. Once again, the same people, giving the same talking points, week after week. For my money, the only thing worth tuning in for is Jon Stewart going toe to toe with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday. Now that's a Sunday show guest I'd like to be with again.

ABC's "This Week" - Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Husain Haqqani.

NBC's "Meet the Press" - Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

NBC's "The Chris Matthews Show" - Panel: Major Garrett, Norah O'Donnell, Michelle Cottle, John Harris. Topics: Would Mitt Romney Beat Barack Obama? Will Romney and Jon Huntsman Have to Answer Questions about What Mormons Believe? Meter Questions: Is Talking About A Positive Agenda on the Economy A Better Re-Election Strategy Than Straight Talk? YES: 8 NO: 4; Is A Compromise on the Budget and Debt Ceiling A Better Political Position in 2012? YES: 12 No: 0.

CBS' "Face the Nation" - Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich.

CNN's "State of the Union" - Defense Secretary Robert Gates; David Axelrod, top adviser to President Barack Obama's re-election campaign.

CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" - Two opposing perspectives on what to do about U.S. unemployment and the deficit with Robert Reich and David Stockman. Next, a rare look deep inside Syria with Fawaz Gerges.

"Fox News Sunday" - Gates; Jon Stewart.

So what's catching your eye this morning?

Ian Frazier's wonderful Lamentations of the Father. Happy Father's Day.

Open thread below....

[Note: This is a piece I published this winter at SGI Quarterly, a Buddhist journal based in Japan. It in turn was derived from a couple of posts I wrote for Firedoglake. It seemed like an appropriate piece for Father's Day. Hope you enjoy. -- DN]

I knew from the time I was a teenager that if I ever got the opportunity, I wanted to try my hand at being a stay-at-home father. My youngest brother was born when I was 11 and I wound up learning a lot about child care – especially the knowledge that it was a special thing.

The opportunity didn’t come till I was in my forties, which was when my wife, Lisa, and I decided that it was finally time to have a child. I was looking for an opportunity to do something besides my longtime newsroom work, and she had just been hired by a major software company; we’d intended all along for one of us to remain at home when we did have a child, so I bid farewell to the regular paycheck, built up my freelance writing business from home, and when Fiona was born in May 2001, I launched into the serious work of being the primary caregiver for our baby girl.

That was more than seven years ago, and Fiona’s been in school full-time for over two years now; the intervening time has given me room to put the experience of being a stay-at-home dad in some perspective.

And I have to tell you: it's been without question the most satisfying and rewarding thing I've done in my life. When I shuffle off this mortal coil, it will be with the knowledge I really did accomplish something worthwhile, and nothing can take that away.

Perhaps more to the point, it's only confirmed my belief that it's an experience more men need. It's important not just for making men better fathers, but I think also for helping women be better mothers -- and most of all, for giving child-rearing the cherished and significant place it should have in broader society.

It was hard, often sleepless, often nerve-wracking, and sometimes unpleasant work, but it was also the best job I ever had. Yet as the months and years added up, and I spent days on end at playgrounds, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and in playdates, it became plain that there really is a certain amount of resistance among a lot of people to the concept of stay-at-home daddies.

And even though a lot of women thought it was neat that a man was being the primary caregiver, there was at times a certain resentment from some women over my invasion of what for them was their territory. Some of this was perfectly understandable; when Fiona was a toddler, the topics of conversation among the gathered mothers often veered into various complaints about female bodily functions, and became my habit to wander off at such moments.

Then there were moments -- whispered comments, offhand remarks, strange assumptions -- where I was reminded that a lot of people, both men and women, privately viewed stay-at-home daddies as wimps or out-of-work losers.

Well, all this faded to insignificance amid the daily reality of raising a child. It's impossible to put into words the immensity of the rewards that come with it: you watch them grow in body and spirit, become real little persons with real minds, dreams, and desires all their own, and you bond with them in a way that lasts for life and maybe beyond. I've done many good and rewarding things in my life, but none of them has meant quite as much as being Fiona's daddy. What other people thought, really, hardly mattered at all, because I knew the score.

Certainly, it never seemed to me that my masculinity might be at stake. Indeed, I've never encountered anything that came close to making me feel like a "real man" as being a daddy.

Continue reading »

Barack Obama on Father's Day

Update: Some commenters have said they're having trouble viewing the video. Here is the full speech from YouTube.

As we did for Mothers Day, we give you Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation video honoring dads

Father's Day for Peace and No More Victims will use your donation to help Abdul Hakeem and others...

Daily Darfur: Activists pressuring China, host of the 2008 Olympics, as they are "not only the premier supplier of weapons to Khartoum regime, [they have] provided unstinting support to the Sudanese government." Um, you mean, like our very own CIA?

Not clicking on those links, folks? Hey, even kids know Darfur doesn't sell.

PBH blog: Michelle Malkin, American Brain Trust.

Connecting the Dots: Dan Rather is depleting the good-will balance in his Journalistic Hall of Fame account.

Holy Crap! A Christian and an atheist have a civil conversation. But wait, that's happening all the time at Blog against Theocracy. And a holy crap classic for Father's Day: Ian Frazier's The Lamentations of the Father.

guest round-up by Blue Gal

the revealer

What do the evangelical Promise Keepers (born yet again and coming to a city near you), Louis Farrakhan's "Million Man March," Boston's recent Catholic Men's Conference (at which Passion star Jim Cavaziel and a Bush officials discussed their headships), and the Jungian claptrap of Robert Bly's early 90s "Iron John" movement have in common? Serious daddy issues. A fascinating Father's Day report from Paul Zakrzewski