Podcast

Picture this, dear listeners: Hulk Hogan and Mr. T are training in New York City's Central Park.  They are running up hills, doing pull ups, shadow boxing, getting ready for the big fight otherwise known as Wrestle Mania.  They are pumped up and doing all they can to get the crowd just as excited.  In the gym they take turns on the punching bag.  Hulk Hogan gives it a few good hits.  Mr. T all but tackles it.  And all around them, the crowd cheers, runs up the hill, too.  Does some pull ups.  They are getting ready as well. But the interesting fact about the crowd is that it is made up entirely of children.  We are not talking about adults.  No.  Middle schoolers and even younger.  Two enormous men, wearing muscle shirts and sweat bands are leading a crowd of children, getting them pumped, excited. I recall watching this spectacle in the 1980s when I was the very age of most of the members of the crowd and feeling the excitement at home in rural Pennsylvania.  I was particularly drawn to Mr. T.  He was also, after all, B.A. Baracas from the A-Team.  On the playground at Youngsville Elementary, I was Faceman.  A bulkier friend was always B.A. Baracas, and he did well enough being afraid of flying.  If you know that detail about the character, then you know.  If not, do some research. As a father looking back on that training sequence for Wrestle Mania, I am struck by how dad-like Hulk Hogan and Mr. T really were.  I can see what they were up to.  They were playing with the kids, having loads of fun, even.  They were modeling what manhood looked like albeit in an over-the-top caricaturist way.  They were strong and motivated.  They were no pushovers.  They were ready for battle.  Motivated.  Resilient. How come on their heels we see the likes of Homer Simpson who debuted in the late 80s/early 90s?  He was and remains a laughingstock, a clown.  And then Peter Griffin from Family Guy.  Dim-witted, fat and foolish.  Remember Al Bundy from Married with Children?  Also fat and foolish.  Dimwitted.  A dolt. Why did fatherhood come under such synchronized attack?  How do we explain this emerging trope in fatherhood that has the supposed head of the household look so pitifully stupid? Ideas that begin in the academy eventually make their way to popular culture.  I have spoken before on the significance of the Frankfurt School in shaping Western culture in that proponents saw everything through either a Marxist lens – have and have nots – or a Freudian lens where everything is sexualized.  What we see as an end result of that way of looking at and understanding the world is the breakdown of the nuclear family beginning with the father.  Remove him from the equation, and everything falls like a row of dominos.  If he can't be removed, just make him look like an incompetent idiot, put him on a public stage – i.e. television – and mock him collectively.  In the end, power and influence is concentrated with the state, and the Marxists win. But I wonder if we might be seeing a pivot in our culture toward Mr. T and men of his ilk.  And it is germinating in the vocation of fatherhood.  Men are taking a stand.  They have had enough of the mockery. If this is the case, then I suppose we really are getting ready for a big contest.  We might not be running up hills in Central Park or pummeling a punching bag will all our strength, but we are moving the conversation onto the sports fields as coaches, into schools as mentors, and into homes as dads who refuse to give up their posts.  They are in it for the long haul.  Quitting is not in their vocabulary.  They are guys who got no time for jibber jabber.