Father Knows Best -- no more

A reader sends this:

Dads Through the Decades: Thirty Years of TV Fathers

By Mark Crispin Miller
At first, Dad seemed to reign supreme in sitcom country -- or at least in its better neighborhoods

On the bulk of those shows set in the suburbs, Dad's authority around the house appeared to be the whole point of the spectacle. It was this implied paternalism that made most of those "comedies" so unamusing: Dad's status was, back then, no laughing matter. Despite their laugh tracks and bouncy themes the real , spirit of those shows was expressed in their daunting titles: Make Room for Daddy and Father Knows Best were pure and simple threats.

As the apparent ruler of the world, Dad, pushed around by no one, somehow deflated all of his inferiors -- and all were his inferiors. Since we almost never saw him working, we had no sense that there was any class above his own: and he had no competition from below.

He also sends me the list of Communist goals from the 1958 book, The Naked Communist. Glenn Beck says that the book changed his life. The list of 45 goals includes:

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war. ...

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks. ...

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand or treat.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity, masturbation and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

A couple of commenters are unconvinced about the political connection to the family court. Obviously the commies are not running the court, but I think that there are political motives.