Today I'm going to focus on fathers and Father's Day in general. It seems that nowadays (by that I mean the latter half of the twentieth century through now) there are way too many negative examples of fathers portrayed in the media...we went from the show Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver to shows like Married With Children and The Simpsons where the fathers were idiots. It seems like now there is a prejudice against men, a form of sexism that is just wrong as the wrong that has been done against women in the past.
So I've been thinking about positive examples in the media. The first one that comes to mind is in the movie Finding Nemo, about a clown fish whose son is taken by a scuba diver after they have a big disagreement. Marlin (the father) starts out very overprotective and has a limited view of what his son can do, but through the movie he learns (with the help of various characters) that you can't protect your kids from everything, or nothing will happen to them. Another positive example in the movie is the turtle Crush, who lets his kid try out what might be a dangerous situation ("Let us see what Squirt can do..) I love this movie for that reason, as the fathers are portrayed as good fathers and not inept or stupid.
Another example that I like is from the novel Pride and Prejudice. I love the father Mr. Bennet in that, because he has a wicked sense of humor. (You have to when you have five daughters, no sons, and cannot leave  your estate to your daughters because of an entailment. In England at that time if you had no sons, women couldn't inherit, so the estate went to the closest male relative. ) That serves as a backdrop for the story. Naturally the girls' parents want to see their daughters married off well, but this causes some problems between Mrs. Bennet and the second daughter, Elizabeth. Their cousin Mr. Collins has asked her to marry him, but as she really doesn't like him, she refuses. Mrs. Bennet refuses to speak to Elizabeth after that, but Mr. Bennet tells her, "If you don't marry him, your mother will never forgive you, and if you do marry him, I will never forgive you." In other words (you have to read the novel to get the context) he was sticking up for her. He wasn't too fond of Mr. Collins himself.
I also want to wish a very happy Father's Day to my brother (first time dad!) and to my father, and my father-in-law and step-father-in-law. Thank you all for being great fathers. Love you all.