The war on fathers

Posted: October 09, 2006
1:00 am Eastern


By David Kupelian
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com





"Father knows best."

How do those three words make you feel? Turn them over in your mind a couple of times and be aware of the subtlest of feelings. Be honest.

Do they make you feel slightly squeamish? A little discomfort in your solar plexus? Is something deep down inside you repelled by those words?

If so, you're not alone. Contempt for male authority – as if to say, "Give me a break, father sure didn't know best in my life" – is everywhere around us. We're swimming in it. You see, men, boys and masculinity itself have been under withering national assault for decades.

"Father Knows Best," of course, was a popular TV show during the '50s, when I was a little boy. Set in the wholesome Midwestern town of "Springfield," insurance agent Jim Anderson (played by Robert Young) would come home from work each evening, trade his sport jacket for a nice, comfortable sweater, and then deal with the everyday growing-up problems of his family. Both Jim and wife Margaret (played by Jane Wyatt) were cast as thoughtful and mature grown-ups. Jim could always be counted on to resolve that week's crisis with a combination of kindness, fatherly strength and good old common sense.

Today, more often than not, television portrays husbands as bumbling losers or contemptible, self-absorbed egomaniacs. Whether in dramas, comedies or commercials, the patriarchy is dead, at least on TV where men are fools – unless of course they're gay. On "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," the "fab five" are supremely knowledgeable on all things hip, their life's highest purpose being to help those less fortunate than themselves – that is, straight men – to become cool.

However, it's not only in Hollywood, but on Main Street, that masculinity has become uncool and even despised. The evidence is everywhere:



In public school classrooms across America, in every category and every demographic group, boys are falling behind.
Girls are excelling and moving on to college, where almost three out of every five students today are female. At the same time, young boys – who don't naturally thrive when forced to sit still at a desk listening to a teacher lecture for six hours a day – are diagnosed by the millions with new diseases that didn't exist a generation ago. To "treat" them and make their behavior more acceptable, we force them to take dangerous psycho-stimulant drugs.

Yes, dangerous. Between six and nine million American children, mostly males, are taking Ritalin, the most popular treatment for Johnny's "attention-deficit" and "overactivity" problems at school. But Ritalin is the trade name for Methylphenidate, which the Drug Enforcement Administration classifies as a "Schedule II" substance. "The controlled substances in this schedule," the DEA cautions, "have a high abuse potential with severe psychological or physical dependence liability, but have accepted medical use in the U.S."

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