By John Y. Brown III, on Wed Jul 11, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Fathers and sons.
Tip for the day.
If you are a dad and haven’t complimented your son recently for doing something well, take the time today to do so. You’ll feel better and it will make your son’s day. … I promise.
Whether you are a 25 year old father with a 4 year old son or a 78 year old father with a 49 year son, it always works that way. Always. And it doesn’t matter whether the compliment is about throwing a baseball or writing silly posts on a blog (or Facebook).
Case in point, an email received yesterday from my father.
JYB Sr., JYB Jr. and JYB III circa 1972
“I try to keep up with your blogs (Recovering Politician) and I find most of them entertaining and thought provoking. I just finished catching up with the last week of blogs and you had a good week.What’s so amazing to your father is how informed you are on so many different categories and how uninformed I am. Guess it’s never too late to try and catch up to be relevant. Love, Dad (There was a time in my life I thought I was pretty well informed but with the computer information I been left far behind. I’m having more fun learning than ever. Even in my so called twilight years .)”
And if you can throw in a comment about you, as a father, having a weakness, even better.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jul 9, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
“I –seriously–believe that an appeal of the Republican party is to appeal to people with a father-deficiency (or “father hunger” as Robert Blye calls it). It’s the father-party. Hierarchical, protective, tough, male-dominated, etc.”
This is a verbatim line form an email sent to a friend [Editor’s Note: Me] who asked me if this meant that Democrats had “mommy issues.”‘
I said, yes. And I really do think you can divide the two major political parties into a patriarchal and matriarchal divide in how they approach problems and appeal to voters.
Republicans are, as described above, the party more inclined to have a convention speaker accuse the competition of being “Girly men.” It’s crude, dated, and ham handed but also fills a need we all have for a strong sure father-figure. Ronald Reagan mastered this role in a way that Schwarzenegger only caricatured.
By contrast, we Democrats are viewed as the more nurturing, compassionate, and patient party who “feels your pain” as Bill Clinton famously said. A banal statement that became famous because it so well symbolized a key difference between Clinton and his opponent; Democrats from Republicans.
A conservative will tell you to quit whining and fix a personal problem yourself. A liberal will go on a long walk with you to help you talk through it. Both approaches have their excesses and extremes. But both parties, in my opinion, do have this primitive distinction between them at their core.
Of course, the gender characterizations I make are outmoded and crude. But then again, that’s a very liberal thing to say.
By John Y. Brown III, on Thu Jul 5, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Parental sacrifice and Independence Day.
Parents, like patriots, sacrifice. At our best we are role models for exemplary behavior in our children. But the other 100% of the time we are more of a mixed bag of admirable and unadmirable behavior. And the path to model parenting isn’t always obvious.
Last night I was with my wife and kids discussing some recent parental disappointments (mine mostly, of course), and I had a brilliant save.
“Ok. You all know how much we love you and try to do what we think is best, right? Well, a while back it became clear to your mom and me that we were raising you kids in ” too perfect and healthy a home environment” and it was hindering your development. You weren’t as resilient or adaptable or manipulative as other kids your age–and that had to change. So, your mother and I decided to create a slightly more dysfunctional home environment to balance your overall psychological development. And, happily for you two, it seems to be working. But it has been an incredible sacrifice on your mom and me. So, in the future when you feel your mom and me come up short as parents and aren’t doing our best, you now know why. We are doing it for your own good.
Hey, it got a laugh from the kids.
And seemed fitting for the 4th of July. In addition to celebrating our national sovereignty today, we should Declaring Independence from perfect parenting, too.
Anderson Cooper has, at long last, publicly said he is gay.
Cooper made the announcement in an email to writer Andrew Sullivan.
“The fact is, I’m gay, always have been, always will be, and I couldn’t be any more happy, comfortable with myself, and proud,” he wrote.
Cooper’s sexuality has long been the subject of ample media speculation, but he has never publicly confirmed it — a fact which he also seemed to address in the email to Sullivan:
In other BREAKING NEWS: The RP is Jewish, RP Jeff Smith is short, RP Michael Steele is African-American. RP Krystal Ball is a brunette, and RP John Y. Brown, III has curly hair.
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 26, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Right of Passage or reason for passing out?
We just received our first child’s first college tuition bill.
It’s a proud moment, to be sure. I smiled inwardly as I knelt down on the ground to steady myself and decided to stay down until the faint feeling and nausea subsided.
It’s a feeling I won’t ever forget. Mixed with great parental pride was the initial thought that passed through my head like a loud chugging locomotive that could be heard over a mile away, “We’re going to have to sell the house!”
Of course, I caught myself up, chuckled, and reminded myself of an age-old trick that always helped in situations like this, “Let it sink in before reacting” and then I knelt back down into a sitting position as the faint feeling and nausea came rushing back.
So, I waited several minutes. In fact about 30 minutes and decided to reflect calmly on this momentous occasion. My second–calmer and more reflective reaction–was we need to sell the house and I’m going to have to pick up a second job delivering pizzas for the next 4 years.
By John Y. Brown III, on Mon Jun 25, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
Movie etiquette.
When your beloved wife rents a movie for you to watch together and says, “I got this movie because the couple reminds me of us” be prepared.
1) Do not criticize the wife’s character
2) Praise the wife’s character
3) Accept that the “similarities” you have with thehusband’s character will be, shall we say, traits you possess that provide “opportunities for improvement.”
4) The “movie” you are about to watch is really more of a “training film.”
5) Tomorrow night is NOT your turn to pick out a movie.
=======
UPDATE. (Comments)
THE RP: John, you need to be a little more subtle in the description. It is obvious that the movie is Shrek. And I’m Donkey
REBECCA BROWN (Mrs. JYB3): Jonathan, Shrek was a slow learner but once he got the hang of what to do, he had a real knack for making Fiona feel special and loved in the end….also, it is hard to be critical of Fiona after that locked up in a castle as an ogre issue…..another great movie for us!
JOHN Y: I had no idea Shrek was about relationships. I just thought it was a funny movie about Ogres. I need the Cliff Notes.
REBECCA:…As for Fiona’s characterization, I think she used the locked up in a castle card for sympathy too much and also could have made fun of herself more to draw the donkey and Shrek into feeling more comfortable around her right off the bat. Instead, they felt they had to show that they felt sorry for her and it set the next few scenes up for constant tension. I don’t think I have ever given this much thought to a Disney movie…thanks Jonathan!
THE RP: To be honest, Rebecca, I think I fell asleep when I watched Shrek with the girls. I was just making the surface comment that John looks like Shrek, you look like Fiona, and I look like Donkey.
By Jason Atkinson, on Fri Jun 22, 2012 at 5:00 PM ET
RP Jason Atkinson helps you kick off your weekend with his latest film about last weekend’s adventures with his kids. Mostly filmed with GoPro, Gunder and Pomp fished the Deschutes with their old Dad’s guiding:
By John Y. Brown III, on Tue Jun 19, 2012 at 12:00 PM ET
What we do is only what we do. Not who we are. (Or why lawyers shouldn’t commit suicide)
As my teen kids get older I encourage them to find “their people”–the groups where they feel they belong and are most at home with. Their tribe, so …to speak. For me, one of the first such groups I found this kinship with was lawyers. I’m one myself, though non-practicing. I found that my interests, ways of thinking, sense of humor, social concerns and life aspirations lined up well with other lawyers–more so than say engineers, accountants, or medical professionals.
Lawyers are a quirky bunch. I joked the other day that one appeal of the profession is that it allows an individual to take his or her collective character defects and bill for them. It’s an exacting, hyper-competitive and idealized profession where each day you start off feeling like Perry Mason but finish the day feeling more like Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener. And so it’s not a shock that attorney’s, as a group, suffer a notably higher than average rate of depression, addiction and suicide. It’s a profession that is both analytical and philosophical. Lawyers are trained to think more and feel less. And many eventually find themselves, on their bad days, on an intellectual precipice staring down, as Nietzsche observed, at the abyss. And the abyss can seem both all consuming and mocking. And since lawyers are not encouraged to ask for help themselves –since they aspire for the controlled hero role in their jobs– they are left alone to do as they are trained to do: To “think their way” out of a problem that was created, ironically, by over-thinking.
My mother tells me my favorite book as a young child was What People Do All Day by Richard Scarry. In the book it explains how everyone has a job to do during the day. Some are bakers, some are firemen, some our merchants, some are farmers, some are moms, some are repairmen, some are are doctors and some are lawyers. And so on. And each has some task or assignment for the day that makes everything kind of work together.
The reason I started this post was to link to this story —an eloquent reflection on on the legal profession by one of Kentucky’s wisest and most insightful practitioners, Supreme Court Justice Bill Cunningham, who recently lost yet another friend and colleague to suicide. Click here to read the story.
But I think I’d rather end this post on a more mundane note. Or rather a mundane hope. That lawyers, like the characters in Richard Scarry’s “What People Do All Day” realize they are only doing a job, completing a task, fulfilling a role that makes society somehow work. If it wasn’t being a lawyer they’d be doing some other job that makes society function. And that it’s just a job, like any other. And that they are just people too. Mostly just trying to stay busy all day.
And others in our busy little towns have jobs that can help those struggling with depression, addiction and thoughts of suicide. And that these people need to stay busy too–from people who need them and reach out for their help. Or our busy little towns won’t work so well.
We all say this almost weekly when describing to others what it’s like to live in Louisville.
“It’s a great place to live and raise a family” I’ve said over 3000 times. And meant it each time.
Sure, it’s not “edgiest… city”, or “fastest growing city” or “fastest dying city” or any of the other more thrilling adjectives that would be more conducive to a burst of adrenaline.
But Louisville isn’t where people move to for an adrenaline rush. It’s where people move to after the they’ve tried the “adrenaline rush” cities and found them wanting.
They’ve learned the hard way that a uniquely “livable city” was what they were really looking for all along…and just didn’t know it. At least that’s my story. And I know it’s a common one.
Louisville is not a city full of cheap external thrills. Rather it is a city that allows us to become our better selves internally.
Congrats Louisville. On being great –in fact, the best–at being a good place to live.
I’d put it this way: LA, NY, Chicago, Dallas, New Orleans, Philly, Cindy, Indy, Atlanta and Nashville are all fun cities to date. But Louisville is the city that you are going to want to marry.
Fathers and sons.
