Bill Clinton as Father of the Year
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The news that Bill Clinton was chosen as father of the year by The National Father’s Day Council has brought for the scoffers. Really, the dude with Monica Lewinsky? The man who humiliated his wife?
They’re wrong. A man can be an imperfect husband and still be a great Dad. In fact, it’s become something of a national crisis. There are way too many men who love their kids more than their wives when, in truth, a healthy marriage dictates that the relationship between the parents always has to come first.
Countless wives who have come to me for counseling complain that they are married to indifferent, unromantic, selfish husbands. Yet, when I ask them, “Does he neglect his kids the way he neglects you?,” the majority of the time they say, “Actually, no. He’s a great Dad.” Even women who have divorced their husbands and told me what miserable marriages they were in will then tell me that, remarkably, their ex continues to be an engaged and loving Dad.
I’m reading The Patriarch, David Nasaw’s magisterial book about Joseph Kennedy. What the biography shows is that Kennedy was a deeply anti-Semitic, compulsively adulterous, misogynist. But boy did he love his kids. A man who put making money before almost all else, the exception was dropping everything whenever his kids were ill. To be sure, there were horror stories like the lobotomy of his daughter Rosemarie. But by and large, though he was an awful, philandering husband who his wife with endless affairs, he was extremely attached to his kids.
Which brings us to Bubba.
A few months ago, while I was sitting at the JCC in Manhattan at a lecture that featured my friend Rabbi Marc Schneier of Westhampton and was moderated by Chelsea Clinton, I was suddenly disturbed by a rush of men with noodles coming out of their ears. Bill Clinton came in and sat in the seat right in front of me. His daughter was on stage and he wanted to see her. He arrived very quietly and was clearly there to show his daughter support. Then, this past Summer, Clinton toured a country very close to my heart, Rwanda, for his Clinton Global Initiative. In so many of the pictures he is walking around with one hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Not even his biggest critics deny that he is a loving and involved father who has given his daughter great confidence in herself as a woman, even as he has, most assuredly, caused her pain by acts of unfaithfulness that hurt her mother, all the more so because they were so public.
The two are not incongruous. You can be a great father even if you’re not exactly the greatest spouse.
Of course, it’s best to try and be both.
tell a friendAbout the Author: Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, “America’s Rabbi” whom the Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international best-selling author of 29 books, including The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging God in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
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How about Dick Hoyt as Father of the Year? You don't know who he is? That's the point. He is the Dad who pushes his disabled son through triathlons, because the son wants to do triathlons and can't on his own. There are millions of Dads deserving of this honor in this country. Isn't it enough that our Politicians live like kings? Do they really have to be awarded every honor too? A real Father of the Year, chosen for his political infamy, would step down and say that there is someone more deserving than him.
Good point Denise. It's just the sign of the times when evil is called good and to have a Rabbi say such a thing shows that it may even be the end of time.
Liad Bar-el, couldn't agree more. I always thought that behavior that tends to destroy families was a bad thing and, if indulged in, actually makes you less of a parent. Apparently, you can be a serial adulterer, now, and still be named Father of the Year. Pathetic!
Sure he's a great father – he raised his daughter to marry a Jew. As the song says, "Another one bites the dust." How come Shmuelik didn't officiate at the wedding?
LOL
don't you mean "Rapist of the Year." That would be more fitting.
Tzvi, LOL. Schmuelik, maybe you're waiting to officiate at the brit milah if they have a baby boy? If so, you might check out the father for he might need one too.
Chelsa is not Jewish, baby is not Jewish.
Rabbi Shmuley is usually fairly thoughtful, but this article is pathetic. Bizarrely, he concludes that Clinton causing his daughter pain by acts of unfaithfulness to Hillary is NOT incongruous with being a great father. Huh? A father is his daughter's first and highest of example of how a husband should treat his wife and and how men should treat women in general. The ultimate disservice a father can render to his daughter, short of abusing her in some way, is being unfaithful to the mother. Cheap ploy by Time to sell magazines that ultimately cheapens fatherhood, motherhood, and the family itself. Sickening.
Good parents don't indulge in behavior that destroys families. And hurting your children by having affairs so you can selfishly gratify an out-of-control libido is, very obviously, incongruous with being a good parent. This article is worse than stupid, it's evil.