The Washington Post is getting in on the Father’s Day week dad-bashing that we’ve also seen from TIME magazine (click here), the nationally-syndicated OPUS cartoon (click here), Barack Obama (stay tuned), and others.
The article “Father Knows Best? These are ‘facts’ that dads have imparted to their kids. Not a big deal, right? Except that they’re all wrong,” while more light-hearted than most other recent Father’s Day week attacks, nevertheless reinforces the mainstream media stereotype of dads as useless blowhards.
The article asserts that fathers who take their kids to museums answer their kids’ questions confidently, even though they “don’t have a clue.” According to the Post, “The phenomenon of the ‘know-it-all dad’ is a familiar one to the docents, curators and keepers of America’s museums and zoos.”
On the web there’s a companion photo montage called “Father Knows Jack,” (pictured), featuring photos of fathers with their children coupled with insulting captions about the fathers’ alleged ignorant pomposity.
To write a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post regarding Father Knows Best?, click here.
Father Knows Best? These are ‘facts’ that dads have imparted to their kids. Not a big deal, right? Except that they’re all wrong
By Steve Hendrix
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Doug Hardy was barely inside the door of the National Air and Space Museum when he made up his first “fact.”
On a sunny morning a few days before Father’s Day, Hardy and his son Andrei were huddled under the Mercury capsule. Like countless dads before him, he was explaining rocket science to his boy, in this case how the mottled heat shield protected John Glenn from a fiery death as the craft plunged through the atmosphere.
Then Andrei, 12, asked: What are these dark disks made of?
Again, like countless dads before him, Hardy answered confidently — even though he didn’t have a clue.
“Steel,” he said.
(The shield is actually made from a plastic-fiberglass composite, said Michael Neufeld, chairman of the museum’s space history division. The disks are plugs left over from post-flight analysis.)
If it didn’t occur to Hardy to say, “I don’t know,” he’s not alone. The phenomenon of the “know-it-all dad” is a familiar one to the docents, curators and keepers of America’s museums and zoos.
“Just about every time I’m on the floor, I hear a father say something incorrect to his kids,” said Bobbe Dyke, who has been a docent and tour guide at Air and Space for 31 years. “You can’t butt in and correct them in front of the kids. You just have to cringe.”
Read the full article here.
|
