Speaking to the perceived inequalities between the sexes in regards to domestic labor, President Obama said in an NBC interview that he thought men "need to be knocked across the head every once in a while."
Many would brush the comments aside as the Chief Executive's attempt at humor. However, as the nation has learned as of result of Rush Limbaugh's failure to acquire a stake in the ownership of the Rams, some thought are so vile that they cannot be enunciated according to the NFL officials that denied the famed broadcaster this economic opportunity.
What if Obama had said every once in a while women need to be knocked across the head to be reminded of just how good they have it in this county? Given that Michelle had never felt pride in America until this past election cycle, it seems this is a lesson he has failed to get across to his little woman.
Radical feminists will respond that domestic violence against women is something its victims are so ashamed of that it can never be mentioned in a jocular manner.
Than isn’t it even more so when the victims are men? For the last time I checked, there were not entire cable networks and television programming blocks dedicated to stories of the struggles of battered men or entire charities established supposedly to address the needs of battered men which quietly toss their daughters into the streets for having reached an arbitrary age still well below the age of majority and irrespective of whether or not these youngsters are capable of providing for themselves.
It’s doubtful that Michelle Obama has done much housework her entire married life. For even though the First Lady has feigned an interest in puttering around in the dirt with vegetables, she probably didn’t do much with the bounty beyond the initial photo-op. For you see, the Obama’s brought their private chef with them to the White House, indicating Michelle has been neglecting this wifely and motherly obligation for quite some time.
From the way Barack framed the issue, Michelle does not really enjoy being a mother all that much. The Benevolent Father (a title applied to Ming the Merciless on the SciFi channel’s adaptation of Flash Gordon and now just as applicable to the President of the United States since he thinks he is qualified to speak on how to run our families when he can’t even keep the country on track) said in the interview, “Michelle was trying to figure out, OK, if the kids get sick why is it that she’s the one who has to take time off of her job to pick them up from school as opposed to me? If...the girls need to shop for clothes...why is it her burden and not mine?”
Well because, as to the clothes bit, if Barack (or any other man for that matter) brought the wrong thing home, it is going to be his rear that is going to get chewed out. As to the more serious matter of a sick child, even though it is an individual family matter to work out, if Michelle Obama is going to cop such an attitude about the matter, perhaps she should have not gotten married or had children.
If this is how the First Lady feels about things, perhaps the Obama's are not the ideal parents the media makes them out to be to which the rest of us fail to measure up to. For parents (especially mothers) that really do put their children above everything else don't go around complaining about it when called upon to perform the most basic parental functions. So instead of lecturing the rest of us about the glories of mandatory voluntarism, perhaps someone ought to giver her an earful about how parents truly dedicated to their children don't go around complaining about those times when their children really do need them.
Often when certain people feel guilty about something from their past or that of their family, they become fanatic to the other extreme and make it their mission to ferret out less significant shortcomings in those around them. The world is going to Hades in a handbasket, yet Obama thinks one of the pressing concerns needing to be addressed is the occasional absentmindedness of fathers who otherwise provide and care for their families.
Obama told NBC, "There's no doubt that our family, like a lot of families out there, were ones in which the men are still a little obtuse about this stuff." That is putting it mildly and frankly an insult to American fathers if they are to be judged by what passed as male parenting in the Obama family. And frankly, the way Barack's mother went pining after Third World deadbeats and abandoned her son to pursue anthropological studies in the area of Indonesian blacksmithing, according to Jerome Corsi, she's hardly a role model worthy of praise or emulation either.
Obama praised his father up one end and down the other in his Inaugural address. In his memoir “Dreams Of My Father”, Obama attempts to excuse his father’s behavior.
What is it exactly that Barack’s pappy is suppose to have done? For starters, when he married Obama’s mother, he had another wife in Kenya he conveniently failed to mention.
As shameful as that is, I Timothy 5:18 teaches that the person that doesn’t take care of their family is worse than an infidel. And it seems Pappy Obama refused to take advantage of the fresh starts America is renowned for and that draw people here from around the world. Obama’s father eventually essentially abandoned young Barack as well.
Pappy Obama just wasn’t a sappy provider and nurturer. Barack’s half-brother Mark Okoth Obama Ndesandjo in the book "Nairobi To Shenzen" contends that their father was actually a wife beater.
No family is perfect. Both parents (that includes mothers as well fathers) often fail to live up to the perfect ideal. However, short of profound negligence, it is not really the place of the federal government in the personage of its highest official to comment in an almost ex-cathedra fashion as to what goes on in our homes as to household banalities such as the division of domestic labor.
Frederick Meekins is an independent theologian and social critic. Frederick holds a BS in Political Science/History, a MA in Apologetics/Christian Philosophy from Trinity Theological Seminary, and a PhD. in Christian Apologetics from Newburgh Theological Seminary.
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