This political roundup…

…starts with Sen. Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech to a church congregation in Chicago, a very strong message similar to the one Bill Cosby has devoted himself to for many years now: the role and responsibility fathers have to their families.

It got wide coverage.

ABC World News opened its Sunday evening newscast with a long report on Sen. Barack Obama’s Father’s Day speech before a “largely black church in Chicago,” where he delivered “a rather blunt message to African-American men. He said too many black fathers are absent from their children’s lives. ‘We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception,’ he said.

(see post below)

The AP reports Obama, “reminding the congregation of his firsthand experience growing up without a father,” said he “was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his mother. He got support, second chances and scholarships that helped him get an education.” Obama said, “A lot of children don’t get those chances. There is no margin for error in their lives.”

His mother and grandparents played such a primary and formative role in Obama’s life. It’s good to hear him refer to them a bit more.

The Wall Street Journal says the “wide-ranging speech on fatherhood isn’t the first time” Obama “has stepped in with a self-help edge for parents. Earlier in the campaign he delivered a speech in South Carolina where he discussed the epidemic of absentee fathers and its impact on the economy. His standard stump speech includes a line that ‘parents have to parent’ and ‘put down the video games,’ one of his biggest applause lines.”

It’s a start, to making families a serious and central concern for society, in more than a general way. The way Carolyn Moynihan points out here.

0 Comment

  • It’s great that someone who is running for the top office in our country understands the importance of fatherhood. Of course, the lib media falls all over itself in covering the story, not necessarilly because it is a really important issue to them, but because of the milage they can get out of it in showing the American public that this is a mainstream guy that has conservative, family values. The reality of the matter though is that Obama can talk all he wants about this but the socialism/great society type programs which he wholeheartedly supports mitigates against family. The black family is/has been under assault for decades, and all of the flowery language from Obama will not change a thing.

  • tks for the effort you put in here I appreciate it!

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