fatherhood.gov

The Left on Fatherhood.gov

fatherhood.gov

The earlier post  about Fatherhood.gov is driving the left totally bonkers and illuminating a lack of reading comprehension among some of its intellectuals. The American Prospect claims, "Stoll was angry that Obama's email and website took time out of his Father's Day, but his evening post on the subject took time as well." The New Republic writes, "I can see why Stoll was upset that the government set off his email buzzer, and was further upset by a message that could easily be interpreted as a federal demand that he leave his children and look at a website immediately. What I don't understand is why he proceeded to ignore his children further by composing a column on Father's Day."

Folks, the post was stamped 9:10 p.m. The children were asleep when I wrote it. Here's a parenting tip almost as good as the government's instruction to filter your government-provided water and mute the government-purchased television commercials: If you have two three-year-olds in the house, put them to bed well before 9 o'clock at night if you want to keep your sanity.

I tried to make this point using the comments function of the New Republic's Web site but it required me to pay money to Larry Grafstein and Marty Peretz before posting a comment. I have nothing but warm feelings toward both Larry and Marty, but it seemed rather demanding of them to ask me to pay them money to defend myself against the accusation of ignoring my own children on Father's Day for an extended period of time. All the more so because they would probably take the money I would pay them for purchasing the right to comment and use it to pay the very writer who is attacking me.

The New Republic cites my post as an example of "intense partisan conflict." But the post also criticized the Bush administration for its fatherhood initiative. How is that partisan, or intensely partisan?

The American Prospect accuses me of "assuming that every family looks and acts like his." That's nonsense. I explicitly acknowledged in my post, "look, maybe there is a role for the government in helping people be better fathers." But if the government is going to be dispensing fatherhood advice, it should be giving good advice, not touting water filters to families who may not need them or telling dads to have their "little ones" go rummaging around in their toolboxes. Bad advice discredits the whole project.