Fatherhood: Teachable Moments and Uncomfortable Truths, Part III—Letting Go

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We began this week's conversation on Fatherhood with Tiger Woods' example of role-modeling by his own actions the best of what a child can emulate and strive for...in the crucible of championship golf, a phenomenal victory despite injury and pain, and, in the media, the picture of a father's loving embrace of his little girl.

But Fatherhood isn't just about being a figurehead, as Barack Obama reminded us in his Sunday speech, calling on absent fathers to be present and responsible in their children's lives. A poignant reminder that he knows whereof he speaks...growing up without the presence of his father in his life, his own bond with his daughters is obviously loving and grounded in appreciation for his responsibility as well as joy of being a father.

The hardest part of the fatherhood bond comes with the time for letting go. And this week, we have been witness to that in myriad ways, large and small, as the two families of Tim Russert, the uberfather, had to do that in the full glare of the media.

His son, Luke, spoke repeatedly about his father in teevee appearance after teevee appearance. He did it with grace and far more patience than the hyperbolic media deserved. Small wonder that his dad preferred to spent time tailgating in Boston with his son than mixing with the movers'n'shakers of the Village's Very Important People.

But let's not kid anyone, Russert was, himself, one of the VIPs. And there are hints of the uberfather, the helicopter parent, in his relationship with his colleagues in the media that extended beyond NBC/MSNBC. The ebullient man, the larger-than-life superstar was the funnel through which all conventional wisdom in Washington must flow. What Ben Bradlee was in the days of Watergate, Russert and Meet the Press had become.

The time will come when that authoritarian power will be analyzed as history rather than hagiography. And how wisely or well that power was wielded or directed. Because just as there were two families mourning a deep loss this week, there were two venues of fatherhood, the family patriarch in charge.

We live in a world of father figures, patriarchies, "Our Father"s, dictatorships, Deciderer's—"Daddy knows best." But the real challenge of Fatherhood—the imprecation we are reminded of in "raise up a child in the way he should go and he will not depart from it..."—has an irreplaceable codicil. Prepare the child to carry on as an adult without the crutch of your presence. To stand on his own two feet.

Having seen clips of Luke Russert's grace immersed in his obvious grief, we have no doubt that his father's daily reminder "you are loved...you are loved, but not entitled..." will sustain him through some tough times ahead.

For Tim Russert's coterie at the Washington Bureau of Meet the Press and in the larger Village where he reigned, I hope for different sustaining words.

We do not know the whys or wherefores yet that informed and conformed Russert's philosophy as bureau chief of the news division of a humonguous global corporation. [Who would really argue that Russert was no less than the bureau chief of the whole place, not just Washington.] Perhaps Maureen Orth, a noted journalist at Vanity Fair, when the time is right for her, will tell us with the same unvarnished candor she brings to her other writings. My Tim is a book I would read.

But in the meantime, there are those sustaining words. Words that only speculation now judges whether Russert himself lived up to, in the crucible and coziness that is the nation's capital. Words that his colleagues now must carry on as they move forward. Words that are both tribute and sorrow.

Words that stand, for the soldiers who come home under cover of darkness, in flag-draped boxes. Or struggle to put back together a life while grievously maimed or mentally scarred, perhaps beyond repair.

Words that stand, for the families who are losing their homes, their jobs, their resources...to disaster, to corruption, to incompetence, to a government philosophy that does not work.

Words that stand, for the families who are bankrupted by medical costs, denied treatments, or without hope because the science was stymied these long years.

For the media "children" as well as the son of the father, this has been a week of memorialization, now slipping into memory. A time of reflection and letting go.

The time for all of us—but especially the media who are charged with the First responsibility to be a free press, watchdogging our liberty, not just parroting the words of the patriarchies like dutiful children—to put away childish things.

The time is coming for all of us when we must show the responsibilities of adults, not children or reactive adolescents. For each of us, to be not just a "go-to" guy, but an examiner, a thinker and a questioner. For history will come soon enough, the future is tomorrow's problem.

In the meantime, Today, "Go get 'em, guys."


The Internet is chock-full of remembrances and memorializing and pontificating about Tim Russert. This is one commentary that caught my eye: Eugene Robinson on Russert
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Fatherhood: Teachable Moments and Uncomfortable Truths, Part 2–Accountability

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Barack Obama chose the setting of the other African American Chicago mega-church to deliver his Father's Day conversation about dads and accountability. He had held his own spiritual father, the man who guided him to his faith, at long last accountable and walked away.

Some say he waited far too long. But letting go, as we see in many venues in the world as well as our own lives, can be a hard thing to do, no matter how difficult the circumstances.

Consider the many families where the dad, beset by alcoholism or chemical dependency, falls short of what he could be as a father and a man, and still the family rallies around him, organizing treatment, doing whatever they can to try to help him heal. We see it in the tabloids, but it's a too-harsh reality in too many families. Made worse by recession and joblessness and catastrophe and loss.

Did you know that Fedex Ground truckers are independent contractors and it's coming out of their pockets at the gas pump...not Bushie's, you know, base. Dads, working long hours, rigorous jobs, carryin' on their shoulders the burden so the corp executives don't have to trouble their beautiful minds worrying about their stock options.

Obama spoke of Accountability for fathers who abandon their children. "Any fool can make a baby." It takes a man, said he, to raise one.

And he spoke with authenticity, too. For he is a man raising two daughters in a strong family and marriage. A man who knows what it is to be abandoned by one's father, to lack the connection to half your life, half your heritage. A man who, on graduation day, could not look out across the audience and see a dad's beaming pride.

Obama speaks to all of us, not just the black community, although that is where the statistics say the greatest problems are. But if you are a child being raised without a dad, it doesn't matter the color of your skin.

Some say, well he's just a political opportunist havin' a Sister Souljah kinda moment. Sorry, that won't wash. It's the authenticity, man. And the reality that his life's work has resonated with the community activism which builds strong families.

Or, Bill Cosby was saying the same thing and he was castigated for his pains. Maybe it was the wrong voice. Maybe he lacked the street cred because of his own shortcomings about family, maybe the time was not yet ripe.

Surely, for problems so great, many voices, many hands, many hearts must draw together to make change happen. And if the best leader to achieve that change is a younger man, in the fullness of strengthening his own family while building strong community, rather than the older man, so be it.

Change won't come easy. Not on this problem, not on too many of the other problems this great nation faces. America is the abandoned child of a self-indulgent ideologic drunk-on-power father these days, a man who blithely ignores the havoc he has created in the American family fabric as he parties on. It will take the rest of us to nurture up the child and guide her to greatness despite the father.

With the guiding hand of a loving man who values and understands all the realities of this nation and says, we can do better.
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Fatherhood: Teachable Moments and Uncomfortable Truths, Part 1–Sportsmanship

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We saw a trifecta of teachable moments provided by larger-than-life figures in their own fields this weekend. And the plan is to talk about each of them in coming days. I suspect you can readily name which public figures I'll be writing about, but just in case, they are: Tiger Woods, Barack Obama, and Tim Russert.

Or rather, since a gazillion words and videominutes have been devoted to Mr. Russert already in all quarters, the lesson of the Friends of Tim.

Sunday, Tiger Woods played familiar ground in the U.S. Open, but it was ground that had been altered. The course "toughened up" to challenge all the players, not just Woods. Tiger had been "toughened up" too—walking the course on a surgery-ed knee that some said was not yet ready for the rigors of a championship game.

Mr. Sunshine reminded me of a time when Tiger's father reminisced about the hours they played together when Tiger was a boy, how he'd drop things just as Tiger was about to swing or putt, or make noise. And when Tiger complained, he'd tell him that nobody else would be better prepared to play, when the time came, than Tiger.

That showed in Sunday afternoon's play, in the moments when sports announcers muttered darkly about why did he aim that way, what happened to that swing...and even the moment when Tiger's own temper was on full display as he smashed down a club.

And yet, he played on, red-shirt dogged with the drive of competition.

He was behind Rocco Mediate at the 18th Hole. Rocco already in the clubhouse watching on teevee.

And yet, the character of a true champion resonated with each swing as Tiger showed a living lesson in playing through pain, in striving for excellence, in never giving up, in being an athlete showing all who seek to emulate him what true sportsmanship is, in being a new father giving his own child a worthy role model on Father's Day.

And then he made that last putt, a birdie, to tie up the game, set up today's playoff. He knew it was going in and the exuberance, the celebration, was itself an act of beauty. Already a winner, always a champion.

UPDATE—and it's almost anticlimactic, isn't it: Tiger Woods wins the U.S. Open sudden death playoff on a birdie.

*****

Until the next time, some thoughts worth your time:
On Barack Obama, by scarecrow at firedoglake.
On Tim Russert, by egregious.

And I'll have more to say, as well.