New York, NY–Our stories on Senator Obama”s Father”s Day speech aroused the ire of some readers both within our membership and beyond.
Fathers & Families is resolutely non-partisan. I tried to maintain partisan balance by showing that Obama”s position on fatherlessness is identical to Bush”s. Some readers felt this was not good enough–we should have made a comparison to McCain. I think these commentators are right, if only for the purpose of protecting Fathers & Families from partisan charges. But McCain, to the best of my knowledge, has not yet announced a policy on fatherlessness.
Meanwhile, the Village Voice lumped us in with “rightbloggers.’ It”s strange how often this movement is attacked and dismissed as right wing. What is so right wing about saying, “I love my children, I have much to offer them, and I want to help do the hard work of raising them?’ The Village Voice piece is sarcastic and it actually gave me a few chuckles. I doubt if any amount of self-protective language would have kept us out of their gunsights, since our main point was critical of Obama (and Bush).
The second paragraph of the story in the Voice was revealing. The author complained of the “rightbloggers’ that, “Few serious governmental remedies were proposed….’ As always, a “governmental remedy’ is the only imaginable answer for liberals (while conservatives will often simply ignore the problem altogether). Fathers & Families has a simple, non-governmental solution: make fathers and mothers equal under the law and equal in our cultural attitudes and much of the problem will solve itself. No cost, no bureaucracy, no mandates.
Do you think we crossed the partisan line in our earlier posts? Tell us below.