In his article on Robert Mapplethorpe’s X Portfolio and the controversy that ensued because of its pornographic imagery, art critic Dave Hickey noted that the efficacy of Mapplethorpe’s art was in enfranchising “…ultimately, that senator from North Carolina [Senator Jesse Helms] and insist[ing] upon his response.” In Hickey’s opinion, if you “deal in transgression,” the response and respect of a hipsterish art cognoscenti has no value. The only response that really matters is the outrage of the senator, ‘only the senator, the Master of Laws, the Father…” 

Robert Mapplethorpe was not the first and certainly will not be the last child who managed to outrage the father.  Criticism of religious and social order is not really a modern phenomenon and, however tempting, cannot be attributed to deconstructive neo-Marxists tendencies in American art. 

Child’s perpetual desire to dethrone father is usually matched by father’s not so subtle urge to devour his offspring. Some fathers need to be enraged, rebelled against, and dethroned. One could only wish that Saddam Hussein’s sons would’ve inspired a national rebellion against their father’s authority instead of becoming his instruments of torture and pillage. 

Director Ingmar Bergman, on the other hand, rebelled against the patriarchal religious order of rigid Scandinavian Protestantism. He upset many fathers, including his own pastor dad who did not approve of his son’s obsession with theater and the lantern’s ability to project images on a wall. 

But the efficacy of Bergman’s rebellion was in his ability to outrage the father, not as a juvenile, but as a child coming into his own. His rebellion was sincere, his criticism of authority genuine and threatening. 

It was also self-aware. As a true thinker and artist who could travel in time, Bergman knew that every child is just an intercourse away from becoming a father. Not surprisingly, one can find more religious insight and earnest attempt to understand the mystery of God in Bergman than in many of the more pious currents of his time.

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A couple of weeks ago at a press conference for her new movie The Switch Jennifer Aniston said, “Women are realizing it more and more knowing that they don’t have to settle with a man just to have that child.”  And with that, the starlet might have dealt a crushing blow to her own film.

After Aniston’s ill-advised political posturing, Bill O’Reilly picked up on the quote and riffed off it on his FoxNews show.  Key quote:

Aniston can hire a battery of people to help her, but she cannot hire a dad, OK? And Dads bring a psychology to children that is, in this society, I believe, underemphasized. I think men get hosed all day long in the parental arena.

This is, of course, right on the money.  Since the right to abort a fetus was dubbed “a woman’s right to choose,” feminists, the welfare state, and deadbeat dads across America have done their level best to marginalize the role a father plays in a child’s life.  And finally, in 2010, Jennifer Aniston proclaims that men are officially unnecessary for child rearing. (more…)

I’m sitting in a waiting room.  I’m waiting for my auditioning squad to execute me.  I’m wearing my black and red plaid, $1400 St. John audition outfit.  I’ve worn it to every audition for six years.  It has a small hole in it.  I hope they don’t notice.  I have time to kill so I’m trying to crawl inside the head of a liberal. 

The people auditioning me will all be liberals.  Should I hide my recent, passionate Tea-Bagging activities, if the topic comes up?  Why should they hate me?  I only want the best for everyone.  My beliefs in the Bible, and freedom and capitalism are only ideals that bless people.  And, they worked real good from 1776 to 2008…with a hitch in the 60s where immorality, free love, the pill, drugs, divorce, and the breakup of the family started the thread of morality unraveling.  You can’t have a great country without the spirit of The Ten Commandments hovering in the hearts of its citizens.   (more…)

I’m far from a perfect father. For example, just the other day, on my watch, my one-year old, Ben, who is now rumblin’, bumblin’ and stumblin’ all over the house, took a dive on the corner of our entertainment center and gave himself a nice shiner.  Within a few minutes, he’d forgotten about it and was wobbling around on two legs again, proud of his newly acquired mobility.  But I felt bad for not catching him. I suppose the President, who made it a point on Saturday to pontificate to us dads about what kind of fathers we should be just ahead of Father’s Day, has never missed either of his daughters just before they got an “ouchie.” If neither Sasha nor Malia have ever scraped a knee, had a black eye, or even fractured a bone, then I guess he can pretend to be the perfect daddy. But then, you could also argue that without said minor injuries, the First Kids probably haven’t lived much of a life.

President Obama’s righteousness about fatherhood comes from the recognition that his own dad was, indeed, a douchebag. He knocked up Obama’s mom and quickly fled the country, only meeting his son once, and bringing him a basketball. There are fathers like that out there, but they’re few and far between. And they deserve our scorn. And I understand the President’s desire to talk about his own experience as a fatherless child. I get it. It must have been terrible and I’d probably talk about it too if my dad Bruce Wilson hadn’t been the incredible dad he is to this day (see my movie “Michael Moore Hates America” for an interview with Pops). (more…)