Tweet
Written by Lisa Russ for RHRealityCheck.org – News, commentary and community for reproductive health and justice.
This commentary is part of a Mama’s Day series by Strong Families, published in partnership with RH Reality Check in our Mother’s Day 2011 series. Follow Strong Families on Facebook and Twitter.
I just walked by the USA Today front-page headline about Osama bin Laden’s death: Huge Boost for America. This is probably the last big media event my son Zach will miss. He is almost six years old, reading cereal boxes, street signs and simple books. With luck and off-switch on the NPR, he’s missed it entirely. Like most six-year-olds, little bits of information about the world leave him asking, “Why? And why not??” This was one conversation I didn’t want to have: “why are people celebrating the fact that this man is dead?”
Six year olds love right and wrong, and clear winners and losers. We live in Oakland, and when Zach got wind of Johannes Mehserle’s verdict in the trial for the killing of Oscar Grant, that led to a whole string of questions: “Why was he afraid of Oscar Grant? Why would he pull the trigger? Do you think it was an accident? Why would he lie?”
I heard President Obama’s press conference, and all through his confident words and measured celebration, I was thinking about Barack Obama the dad. While politically the President hasn’t been all I had hoped (to say it mildly) I have never lost my connection with Obama the candidate, the senator, the regular guy who is the first president I know of who is a hands-on dad.
You probably know like I do that he eats dinner with family most nights, and makes it to all of his kids school conferences: parenting stats that put him well ahead of our family and most people that I know. And I believe he is engaged with his daughters as growing individuals who are learning at a young age how to navigate their strange and complex world.
I wish I could have been at the table to hear how he answered his daughters’ “Why?”
4 Comments
If the tables were turned and the other side sent a drone to visit Obama while he sat at the dinner table with his family what would the headlines say? Probably something much different than what has been written about Muhammad al-Gaddafi’s Son and grand children?
So glad to know I’m not the only one who is horrified by the USA. We are the mass murderers of the world.
US elementary schools should counter the overwhelming machismo
in American society with empathy and compassion classes.
I’m not kidding. They’re sure gonna need it.
“Progressives” who support Obama’s death squads and bombings are total frauds. Their convictions simply went out the window because he’s a Democrat. It’s no wonder Obama’s such a mad man. He never gets any push back from them. All the apologists fail to recognize their own moral bankruptcy.
Chris Floyd tears into Digby on this very point.
Good stuff.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/2125-day-of-the-dead-the-hit-man-as-hero-.html#disqus_thread
If the Watergate scandals were impeachable, then surely
assassination of an “unarmed” man in our names (if we are
citizens of the United States) should call for impeachment
in 2011, not reelection in 2012. The eloquent outrage in
this diary, the comments, and the link to a great “Day of
the Dead” article is a sign of hope at a sad hour.
And the “closure” racket seems borrowed from the marketing
of the death penalty over the last two decades: the best
“therapy” for the tragedy of having a family member
murdered, or the mass tragedy of 9/11, is the cold-blooded
killing of a subdued victim. This approach deserves very
active third-party opposition in the 2012 election.
Quick correction: since, according to the official
narratives, Osama bin Laden (unlike a judicial execution
victim) was “unarmed” but not yet subdued when killed, I
might instead say a “subdued or subduable” victim –
not being sure if the latter adjective is a novelty.