Good Is Good: Why I Agree with Rick Santorum
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tom Matlack is the former CFO of the Providence Journal and is the founder of The Good Men Project, a non-profit charitable corporation based in Rhode Island and dedicated to helping organizations that provide educational, social, financial, and legal support to men and boys at risk.
Yesterday I was talking to one of the GMP contributors who was very upset about the characterization of our Project in the Atlantic. I tried to make him feel better by telling him, “The good news is when major media starts paying attention, that means you matter. The bad news is when you become the story you realize that major media almost always gets the facts wrong. I learned that the hard way while serving as CFO of a large media conglomerate where I would literally spoon feed top reporters from the WSJ and NYT financial data–numbers not subject to interpretation just cold hard facts–that they would get wrong.”
Then this morning I opened up the paper to read numerous supposedly objective news organizations and many columnists (see Frank Bruni’s piece “The Do-Over Derby” as a case in point) ripping Rick Santorum a new one for his position, and the supposed revision of his position, on parenting.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTNow I am no Rick Santorum fan. I find the Jesus is My Personal Savior litmus test in the Republican Party abhorrent (where is Bill Weld when you need him?). The chance of my voting for the guy in a general election is about the same as the chance that I will run the 100 yard dash in under 10 seconds any time soon. Nil.
Still I don’t trust anything I read anymore. And that goes double when it comes to politicians with massive PAC-funded slime campaigns on both sides. And the willing press playing right along to drive readership amongst the partisan and increasingly gossip oriented news cycle. So I went to the source documents. I only believe what I actually hear for myself coming out of somebody’s mouth.
I was shocked by what I found. At first all I could find was Rick and his wife saying stuff about stay-at-home parents that I strongly agree with. Then I found the supposed smoking gun. Still, I think it’s worth actually considering what he wrote and said before letting the tigers out of the cage.
◊♦◊
The first time I could find that the issue came up was during a interview on Meet the Press, in which David Gregory quotes It Takes a Family and asks Santorum to respond. Here it is:
A few things here that could be troubling. ”Traditional Family” and “Radical Feminism” are both terms that can certainly make progressives look for the nearest shotgun. But I would also argue that those terms really depend on what you mean by family and feminism. As we have found out the hard way here on GMP, they can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. More on that below. But let’s just say that a charitable view of the excerpt and the interview are that he is less than clear as he doesn’t address fathers in any way and he doesn’t really say whether he believes that the over-emphasis on work applies only to women.
◊♦◊
Here is the first clip I found in which Santorum and his wife Karen address the issue more recently, and attempt to clarify the book and prior statements.
This is the one I watched first and quite frankly I had to hold my nose and admit in the dark corner of my home office that I agreed with everything that he said, particularly the part about how important proactive and stay-at-home dads are and the way in which parenting has been undervalued in general.
◊♦◊
The criticism, of course, is that his handlers coached him into a switch and by changing his tune there’s a powerful gotcha moment here for the Left to kick-start the attack just in case this guy turns out to be the Tea Party’s final line in the sand to get rid of Mitt.
That to me is the mistake. It’s behaving just as badly as the other side.
Did Santorum start out by saying that he is promoting the traditional family and that he thinks feminism had a role in undervaluing moms? Yes.
Did Santorum elaborate on that to say that he thinks the family includes dads and stay-at-home dads who cook and clean and change diapers? Yes.
Is it possible that the feminist movement, while crucial to equal rights that progressives like me violently support, unintentionally lead to us all devaluing the importance of stay-at-home parents of either gender? I think that’s a question worth pondering and isn’t out of the question.
Is the supposed flip-flop on this issue the thing that we as voters should be focused on when gays can’t marry, we are talking about fighting yet another war in the Middle East, our country is on the edge of bankruptcy, there’s a massive concentration of wealth, our education system is a failure, and our prisons are bursting at the seams with a disproportionate number of African-American men? No.
For more of Tom's works, as well as other pieces on related topics, go to The Good Men Project Magazine online, here.
If you valued this article, please LIKE GoLocalProv.com on Facebook by clicking HERE.
For more Lifestyle coverage, don't miss GoLocalTV, fresh every day at 4pm and on demand 24/7, here.
Related Articles
- Good is Good: Being a Dude is a Good Thing
- Good Is Good: 10 Reasons Men Should Cook
- Good Is Good: Should Boxing Be a Women’s Sport?
- Good Is Good: What I Love About Men
- Good is Good: Are Women Addicted to Beauty?
