Not that I necessarily subscribe to any of that shit, but it's delicate to the NYT and everyone else because, oh, is it possible that a black person can speak poorly of other black people ???  Boring, phony delicacy that you never see when a white leader tells white people to stop being douche bags. 

Why does Zachary get away with "his own kind" remark?.  Where are downtownlad and Jeremy with their rigid and unbending outcry Zachary forever being a "bigot"? 

Well here's some fodder for discussion for those reverse bigots:

How ironic - the President steps up and talks about the responsibility and importance of fathers.  And yet we as a society want to play games with the effectiveness of a mother and father family and change the federal recognition of marriage to include any two (at least start there)people who want every possible benefit of mother and father families without being forced to meet societies desire for a mother AND a father in a family. 

How idiotic and selfish.  The President's words today are a complete waste of time if we as a nation change the federal recigniton of the meaning of one woman and one man marriage.  definition of marriage

Cosby has been a nonperson to the NYT since he wandered off the plantation and started blaming blacks and liberals for the disfunctional black family. 

Eh, he's been catching shit from the politically correct crowd for a lot longer than that.  People condemned the Cosby Show for featuring black characters who were (gasp) married, educated, successful, and well-spoken.  And before that, he was criticized for not having overtly racial comedy material in his routine. 

But in the end his critics will be forgotten; Cosby's comedy will be remembered. 

Funny how this NYT thumb-sucker delicately skirts around the truth about Obama's father, mentioning that he died when Barry was 21 but not how he abandoned his family when his son was just a wee lad. 

Also, the article tells us that Obama gave a blunt, direct fatherhood speech, but they don't tell you one thing he actually said.  No transcript, no direct quotes, we just have to take their word that it was "striking for its bluntness". 

I think it's important that all men realize that they matter to their children a great deal.  I think that fathers actually have more influence on their children than mothers do.  This might be due to which parent does most of the baby and toddler care... "Dad" gets to be the parent for the kids when they are trying to leave childhood, because childhood is mother dominated... but I could be wrong.  Still, the value of a strong relationship with a father is vital for girls understanding how they should be treated and for boys to know how to be a man. 

It's possible to actually say that these days.  For a very long time, I'd say for my lifetime, any mention of how important fathers are was met with demands that we not make divorced or single mothers "feel bad." 

If the "single parent" thing wasn't your idea or your fault... why should it make you feel bad? 

Miss prints have a royal history.  From Stalin and His Hangmen, 'misprints had been disingenuously used to annoy authority.  Queen Victoria was reported to have "pissed" over Waterloo Bridge.  Substituting one consonant made Stalin "pisser" or "shitter" (ssalin, sralin).  Stalingrad could be set to read "Stalin is a reptile" (Stalin gad).  Under Stalin, misprints were declared "sorties by the class enemy."  Writers or typesetters could die for one misplaced letter, as Andrei Tarkovsjy's film Mirror unforgettably suggests.' 

This seems to have been a very good speech on a very apt topic and I can think of no one better to deliver it.  I also believe Obama himself makes a fine example of fatherhood.  His own children are quite fortunate to be raised in such a sterling solid family.  I do appreciate a man walking the talk. 

"Ironic, coming from Obama, don't you think?  Since it was a large lefty government program that incented and caused the collapse of the black family, made black fathers irrelevant." 

This isn't quite right, I think, although some people figure that the government programs kept black families from *recovering*. 

What really did it to start was labor unions. 

I recall a documentary, though the details are getting dim, that made the claim that there were so few jobs that urban black men were *allowed* to do that most black families had to be supported by women in non-union (domestic) jobs.  Black men could be Pullman Porters and very little else.  To work in a *trade* one had to be a member of a union and the unions absolutely, positively, did not include black men. 

That's a lot of generations of habit to get over.  Providing government incentives for families headed by single women did nothing to help, of course.  I'm not disputing that at all. 

we can also learn something from the blue people instead of black and white or olive and magenta. 

The Blue People have a matriarchal society: unusual enough in terms of "Western" cultures, almost unbelievable in context of what is assumed to be "Islamic".  Women keep all the household keys, show off their "strength" by impromptu wrestling matches, go unveiled - while the men modestly cover their noses and mouths with the end of their tagelmousses (several meters of gauze, wrapped around the head in a turban), and have equal - if not greater rights to choose/take as many lovers as they wish before marriage: it only increases their value, skill and desirability. 

Why do Blue men, feared to this day for their ferocity and skill as warriors and respected as businessmen, "veil" and defer to their own women?  Because of their belief that the world has a great number of evil "spirits" eager to invade the body via any opening - especially the mouth and nostrils, so they must cover/protect the entranceways, but since women know the secret of life: only they can conceive and givebirth, they have natural protection against these evil spirits. 

to be found at orientaldancer.com

signed,

a belly dancer in a blue shimmy skirt whose fingers do much better in dance than on a keyboard grid.  Flow!. 

I have been relentlessly critical of Obama on this blog and I feel justifiably, BUT this is one situation where the color of the president's skin actually matters and helps.-I am happy to praise him for this message.  In fact, for the first time in my life, I'm proud of this president. [ sic]-Thank you, Mr. President

Speaking of "delicate", why is it that only proud racists will mention the obvious: that in our world at this time everywhere blacks are in charge the society is in shambles.  From Compton, CA to Haiti to South Africa and everywhere in between. 

I'm sure I'll be called a racists just for stating the obvious.  I take no pleasure in this fact, but believe it will not be improved until we can at least acknowledge the problem. 

I know all the "imperialism' justifications, but a lot of other former colonies are doing well.  Even in the United States blacks have more problems than any other group.-I don't have an answer, but I think the fact that we can't even talk about it may be why it persists. " Delicate" means intractable. 

At this point, it's neither courageous, empathetic, or intelligent to go after the men alone.  There is a sizable minority of irresponsible, immature individuals among poor blacks-- women as well as men.  By attacking men only, Obama stays within the PC world. 

Almost none of the poor single mothers was raped into pregnancy, and few married, had kids, and were later abandoned. 

Blaming men only is also not likely to help.  The men involved are unlikely to see things through this PC lens.  If they alone are blamed and the women are potrayed as passive victims, the most likely effect on the men is to make them angrier and less willing to compromise. 

This turkey (O) is turning out to be a lot worse than I expected in just about every way-- and I sure didn't expect much, believe me. 

You want to know why the black family has broken down in America?  Here's a powerful anecdote from my wife's work:

She was providing family therapy through Medicaid to a 14-year old girl and her family.  When asked about getting ahead in school, so she could get ahead in life the girl was dismissive: "Why should I get a job?" 

Her life plan consisted of getting pregnant at the earliest opportunity so she could go on welfare and get her own apartment.  She already knew how to work the system to get her needs met and didn't understand why she should aspire to wanting more for herself.  The entire concept was foreign to her. 

...just stop and let that really sink in for a minute...

Previous commenters have each had pieces of the puzzle which has brought our society to this sad situation.  Here's my own personal Top 10:

1) A government-run welfare system that enables people to manipulate it into getting a lifetime of income.2) A system that rewards young girls for getting pregnant.3) The veneration of single mothers and the consistent denigration of fathers and fatherhood.4) The identity politics of the Democratic Party.5) The victim politics of the NAACP, Black Panthers, Nation of Islam, La Raza, etc.6) The racial hucksterism of Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton.7) The cultural belief that studying and achieving academic success is "acting white. "8) The tolerance and encouragement of the "stop snitching" culture that encourages crime and criminal behavior.9) Excuse-making for the failures of urban black culture by guilty white liberals rather than demanding social change.10) Corruption of local government that lines the pockets of its elected Democratic Party members and their cronies first and foremost with absolutely zero regard for the inhabitants of the city. 

And before people start talking about how this isn't a problem caused or furthered by the Democratic Party, its members, or its policies, let's look at the party affiliation of the cities (and states) where the problems are the worst:

Every single one of these blighted urban areas shares one thing in common: decades long election and re-election of Democratic leadership (and their disastrous policies) with ever-worsening results which are and have been entirely predictable. 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again...

kinbote-I could not agree more.  The idea that family problems out there are all the men's fault is specious at best. 

Using Father's Day to further that idea is - or should be- unacceptable.  Either that, or next Mother's Day I expect a speech from Obama lamenting how his mother chose to have a baby with a married man she hardly knew, then selfishly gallivanted around Asia leaving his grandparents to raise him. 

Have to say that is one piss-poor rebuttal, if that's what it's supposed to be. 

Seems to me Jeremy failed to address in any way Jim's substantive points about the politics of dependency, exploitation, replication and perpetuation of the underclass by urban welfare statists since the Great Society. 

Sometimes the lack of a man creates the problems. Sometimes its the lack of good decision making by women that creates the problems. And often it's just piss-poor parenting from one or the other or both. 

I no longer worry about the little narcissist.  It's attention that feeds his illusion that he's more important than he actually is. 

As for the story, whether he wants to believe it or not, it's the absolute truth.  When my wife related the story, we were both dumbfounded. 

It wasn't even the essence of the story: that she wanted to have a baby to get her own place.  If you've been around the block more than once, you've probably heard stories to that effect before. 

What was utterly shocking was the girl's complete lack of comprehension that she should want more from her life, that she was worth more than being yet another welfare queen.  It wasn't so much that she was being intentionally manipulative: she had absolutely no other frame of reference from which to operate. 

The dependency you don't even understand is the worst kind, and this poor girl has been sentenced to a lifetime of subsistence living by a culture that doesn't encourage excellence and thinks that the height of achievement is figuring out how to vote themselves another $20 a week in their welfare checks.  That's a culture that needs to be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up. 

I blame LBJ.  I blame every person who thinks they're doing people a favor by giving them a fish instead of teaching them how to fish.  It's not charity these people need: it's a leg up.  It's the worst kind of condescension to just hand someone a check and wash your hands of them.  These people are human beings: not just votes at a ballot box.  Welfare is just the new form of slavery, and every single American is paying for it: most of all, those who are receiving it. 

This is nothing more than the same, time worn stereotype thrown out by racist assholes for years on end. 

Put you hood back on and take a hike." 

I believe it. 

I believe it because I was talking to my neighbor, 16 year old and blond as can be... her idea of a good plan was to get herself taken away from her parents, sue for emancipation, and then move into her very own apartment that would be paid for by the state. 

I *gently* suggested that if she had the possibility of parental support (they *weren't* kicking her out, amazingly enough) that living off the taxes paid by others was sort of lame.  I don't think she'd ever heard anything remotely like that before. 

The "system" has no way to tell who it is that has no where to go and who simply has no where she *wants* to go. 

My neighbor ended up spending some time in Juvie but last I heard she seemed to think she'd gotten accepted for the "legal adult, let us pay your rent" program. 

In the 80's, my father dated a woman whose son was a young doctor in the coal region of Kentucky.  Some of the miners were trying to get the black lung pension by getting black lung, and of course, the hot young women were trying to marry them.  So the federal government provides incentives for marriage for poor white people! 

The relative economic success of the 1990s rested primarily on 3 pillars:

1) restrained government spending by a divided government which prevented the sort of mass economic sabotage that we're seeing today;2) the ephemeral "tech bubble" which burst in 1999-2000; and

...most importantly for this discussion...

3) the welfare reform which Republicans introduced in their Contract With America (and which Clinton eventually got on board with when it became clear how popular it was) which forced millions of previous "welfare queens" who were otherwise fully capable of working to seek gainful employment. 

Their entry into the workplace and the powerful boost they gave the economy they generated are often swept under the rug by Leftists who would just as soon that people didn't realize that how damaging it is to the psyche and the economy when you encourage potentially useful contributers to society to collect government checks in exchange for their votes at the ballot box every couple of years. 

As Synova and Ralph's anecdotes prove, the problem of government dependency is far from limited to the urban black community.  They are disproportionately affected by it in terms of percentages of their community, but do not receive the greatest amount of government assistance in terms of absolute numbers. 

It's a societal problem that needs addressing sooner rather than later.