This is the first in a series of weekly posts concerning some of the best fathers ever to grace the idiot box and why we could use a few of them in modern society.
It’s about the rules. And without the rules we might as well all be up in a tree flinging our crap at each other, like monkeys! – Red Forman
Red was generally seen as an overbearing but comedic figure dragged out of the seventies and hyperbolized (is that even a word?) for the sitcom That 70′s Show. The problem is that Red, while the character has its faults, wasn’t all that horribly off the mark in quite a few areas. You see while Red was seemingly out of touch with the young people around them he still recognized the dangers they subjected themselves to and attempted to stop them from being idiots. He was ineffectual according the script writers and apparently as blind as a bat be Red Forman cared about his family, his worth as a man, and the well being of his children. The writers wanted to portray an overbearing but bumbling father figure and pretty much managed to get the bumbling part right but by my estimation Red wasn’t all that overbearing and he was right almost every time he stepped in and threatened to put his foot in someone’s ass.
Of course by our modern moral standards good ol’ Red is a caveman who doesn’t understand his kids’ feelings, his wife’s needs, or his neighbor’s plights. In my opinion that’s a big part of the problem. Not his apparent lack of understanding but that we have sunk so low as a society that we actually find Red’s abhorrence of Bob (a cheating husband, swinger, and all around good for nothing) something that is humorous because it’s wrong. Furthermore we are shown, through comedy of course, that if Red took a little more time to be Eric’s friend that he would be a better dad and have Eric’s respect and that if he accepted that Kitty was the bread winner he’d be better off. I am saying, for the record, that these lesson’s couldn’t be more wrong.
A father should be a father first and friend last. If your kid doesn’t respect you the answer is never to befriend them, coddle them and validate their screw-ups. The main reason Eric wouldn’t have respected Red was that insipid Kitty going behind Red’s back and coddling their hapless son. A good father does what Red did: Set out consequences and let their children experience them. A good wife supports her husband in these endeavors which is something we rarely saw Kitty do at all.
A good husband will not now, would have never then and never will accept his wife being the breadwinner. Men are not wired that way and if they can accept then there is something dreadfully wrong with them and they need help. A man should provide for his family, protect them, and make them feel safe. This belief is entirely separated from any sort of ruling the household mentality it’s a very simple recognition of how nature works and how men are wired. You can disagree with me all you like but when it comes down to our animal responses any man who is a house-husband is, for all intents and purposes, castrated. Red was not without his faults as a husband though. He did need to pay more attention to Kitty’s needs because that’s part of a husband’s job. He failed miserably on that front but with her undermining his dealings with the children at every turn it’s no wonder he didn’t pay attention. Not that I condone that sort of relationship but it’s, honest to God, the end result of every relationship I have ever seen where one of the people involved undermines the other. But I digress…
As for Bob…Red should have kicked has ass more than once and that’s all I have to say on the matter.
So while brief, unprofessional, and ill researched that is the first piece in my best dad’s on television series. I had wanted this one to be more funny but I got a little rant going and you are lucky I got it turned off at all. So I will leave with these Red Forman quotes for now…
Eric, I’ve told you. Your job is to study hard, get good grades, get a scholarship, go to college and move away! End of discussion!
Bob’s always upset. He’s a little girl in big boy pants.
Red: Are you on dope? Are you?
Kitty: Because, because, we can help get you clean. There’s counseling, hospitalization–
Red: My foot kicking your ass.
The proper way to handle your kids doing drugs…
Would you stop being a dumbass!
Yes, I know it’s hard to hear with your head up your ass..
Son, you don’t have bad luck. The reason bad things happen to you? is because you’re a dumbass..
You morons just hung vacancy signs on your asses, and my foot is looking for a room!
What with our ungrateful daughter, our lying son… actually I think it was a little better than last year.
You should red the book my foot wrote. It’s called ‘On the Road to In Your Ass’
You know I only thought I was done…
Red’s biggest problem is that he never actually put his foot into someone’s ass. He threatened, cajoled, yelled, and all that but never once did he follow through. Can you imagine if Red had actually put the boot to any one those heathen kids that always hung out at his house? Not in this modern day society where you can’t even tell your kids that they’re dumbasses but back in the glory days when you could actually discipline the little Lord-of-the-Flies wannabes? I harken back to a time where a razor strop was something you got one time and never wanted again and you respected your dad for it and couldn’t wait to give it to your own kids. We are turning into a nation of pussies with no signs of slowing that slide into pussydom. We need more men like Red Forman waving the flag, kicking the asses of dumbass teenagers and working their butts off to provide for their families. It’s dads like good ol’ Red that made this country great and kids like Eric, all grown up now, that are ruining it today because daddy didn’t give them the right color jelly beans.
Stay tuned for net week’s installment of Great TV Dads wherein I explain why Christopher Titus is a wussy and Ken Titus was a role model for dads everywhere…
29
Mar
I have made some changes to stop the spammers from signing up for accounts ’round these parts. I have enabled OpenID and set it so that new users have to have a valid OpenID to sign up for an account. You can still comment the same way you did before or use OpenID. It’s either or for comments since the spam controls I have on the comments work so well that hardly anything gets through. Since you don’t have to sign up for an account to comment this shouldn’t really affect anyone that’s already commenting here. This was more of a heads up in case something goes awry. I have had around 40-50 spam sign ups a week and would really like them to go away. I am deleting them as they come in, well weekly, so if I accidentally delete a real person’s account please let me know.
26
Mar
I am not ready to comment on the supposed health care reform that was rammed down our throats this week but I do want to comment on the utter and complete hypocrisy of the left that’s been brought forward during all of this.
First and foremost you can rest assured I don’t condone any of the actions I am describing here. I want that understood before I even get started. I think the moronic actions I am going to speak about are abhorrent regardless of who does them. I don’t want any damn confusion on this one.
The left is currently having a hissy fit about some of the fringe elements of the right wing talking about violence, throwing bricks through windows, and implying threats by means of leaving coffins on lawns of people who voted for the atrocity we saw signed into law this week. I think these morons should be called to accountant for their words and actions but the left doesn’t have a damn leg to stand on and certainly doesn’t have any moral high ground to stand on when it comes to this issue. The left has been using tactics just as abhorrent for as long as I can remember and defending them when necessary. The MSM, busy commenting on the right’s fringe element, missed that the only shots fired from a really real gun this week were fired through a Republican lawmaker’s office window. So what if someone called for Obama to be strung up? All you have to do is visit the ol’ Daily Kos to find eight years of calls for worse to happen to Bush. The beauty of it all is when leftist lawmakers were called on their people’s bullshit on sites like Daily Kos they defended much worse than is being said now as political free speech. They didn’t want anyone investigated for saying George Bush should be hung and now they are sending out the Secret Service on the public’s dime because someone had the balls to say it about the boy band in the white house! It’s utter hypocrisy and frankly disgusting.
The icing on the cake is the MSM painting these nutjobs as the average right winger. While those of us on the right of the political spectrum stand by and watch the liberals drink the kool-aid and make comments that deride churchgoers as weak minded and gullible while in the same breath condemning anyone who says anything bad about their slightly dark skinned savior. It makes one sick to the stomach and have overwhelming urges to randomly stab morons on both sides of the name-calling.
That’s what we need! We need some bad ass punk rockers who want to start shit to wander around and kick people in the teeth for being hypocrites. You don’t get to be right wing and claim to be patriotic while deriding the office of the President, and no I don’t care who is in that office. You don’t get defend leftists calling for violence against the right and then be appalled when the right does the same thing. You don’t get to pretend to be victims after you pass legislation that well over half the country doesn’t want by sheer force of power and they respond like they might be ticked off. You ought to all be kicked in the teeth and that goes for Obama as well with his flippant comments about the right wing wanting to start working on repealing this bill. You don’t get to pretend to want bi-partisan support and then piss in the coffee of the other side every chance you get. It makes you a fucking hypocrite regardless of what your teleprompter says and you deserve to be kicked in the teeth.
Yes, kicking people in the teeth is violent and I decry the current fringe right wingers calls for acts of violence in the same breath. No, this doesn’t make me a hypocrite. I am not decrying their idiocy because they suggest violence, use hyperbole, or any of that tripe. I decry them because they are idiots who can’t manage a consistent stance from one day to the next. And no I don’t mean I think someone should literally kick all these people in the teeth. While it would amusing to watch it wouldn’t change anything at all. So yeah my words may be violent and I may be pissed at those who claim to be pursuing the same goals I pursue as well those who oppose those goals I won’t be collecting teeth any time soon. If you can’t see the difference between being irritated and venting and actual threats then you have no business being on the intertubes and quite likely should be removed from the gene pool.
I am an arrogant ass sometimes. This is one of them. I am disgusted right now by just about everyone involved on either side of this debate. So I offer this free advise: If all you have is ad hominem hyperbole, violent hypocrisy, and nothing real to say then please stop debating this topic and if you can’t then go hang yourself so we can all stop having to read your moronic words. And I don’t care which side of the debate you are on; if you can’t present reasoned arguments without using racial slurs, calling people gullible, or calling for violence then my solution is easy. Moron, rope, tree – Some assembly required. You all make me want to puke.
24
Mar
Those of you who know me probably aren’t shocked by this in the least little bit. I am. So was the wife. You see we were actively trying to not have this happen again. I didn’t want another baby. At least that’s the simplest way to put it. The reality is I would prefer one less or one more than we already have (seven for those who just joined us) because I prefer even numbers. On top of that we still haven’t got our redheaded kid. You may think that we just might not supposed to have a little redheaded knee-biter but I am here to tell you that you are wrong and it’s in my contract. I am supposed to get a redheaded baby and I don’t have one yet. So here’s out last chance at having my birthright child, the redheaded one, the one that screams “Daddy’s people come from Ireland!”.
Yes, for those that are keeping score, this is baby number eight and no we don’t think that’s too many. I love having a large family and I feel perfectly comfortable making sure even eight little Lord-of-the-flies-heathens get enough love and attention. I just want to be through with diapers, the terrible twos, and the wife being pregnant (I am pretty sure she’s tired of that as well). I want to move past this stage of making and having kids and into the stage of maintaining the status quo of the family. So this is our last. Last. Child. Period. We are going the medical route to make sure this doesn’t happen again. I may regret this decision in the future but it’s the right decision and since I can honestly call this a 1% (condoms are 99% effective at preventing pregnancy) baby then medical route is the only logical option.
To make what could be a very long post short: I wasn’t happy when that damn test came back positive but it took less than 24 hours to get excited about it. In fact it took telling the current crop of the Potter Clan and seeing the looks on all of their faces and hearing then all talk at once out of excitement to get me happy about it and that was just the next morning. We have our first appointment with the ob/gyn on the 31st and I will keep all three of regular readers updated. Just say a little prayer for us and mention we really want a girl and if it’s not a red head I may leave it outside of the hut for the wolves and try again.
This piece of news inspired my Top 5 List over on 9b today so make sure to check it out: TOP 5: LULLABIES OR SLEEPY SONGS
18
Mar
Well it’s day two of SXSW and I have moved from my friend’s apartment and a less than comfortable couch, don’t get me wrong I am grateful for the couch, to a hotel room floor that is a single block from the action. Thanks to Bryan and Rob I can stay longer. It’s late afternoon on day two and we are cooling our barking dogs in the hotel room. So, and videoed Ha Ha Tonka, met Virgil from Suburban Home finally, drank with Austin Lucas, and generally raised hell for the first part of the day. Now we are resting up prior to the Memphis Review with Harlan T. Bobo, Hill Country Revue, Cory Branan and then on to try and catch Those Darlins before they are falling out of their tube tops drunks like they were last night at 1 AM.
I am still undecided on when I am heading home from this little vacation. I have compelling reasons to see it through until Saturday but also very compelling reasons to go home a day or two early. I am flying by feel at this point. I will post some sort of gallery of my twitpic shots when I am done here. Don’t expect my usual concert shots as these are just on my phone but still it’s better than nothing.
Anyway time to let these dogs stop barking. I will try and remember to update tonight after all is said and done. But if I don’t…oh well! This is my vacation after all.
