We must start with Tim Russert, a celebration of a man who was a journalist’s journalist, if we are to believe all the hype this weekend. The praisers were lined up for the entirety of this week’s Meet the Press, and the transcript is well worth reading, if the show would have turned you into a diabetic it was so sweet and syrupy. I’m likely to go with Glenn Greenwald in the long run, that Tim Russert, perhaps not as overt as most of the other talking heads on the news, was for a large part of his career a bit of a mouthpeice for the administration in power, and with the failings and cowboy diplomacy of the Bush Administration, being a mouthpiece and performing stenography at times instead of journalism, is not serving us in the public. Here’s how Glenn puts it at Salon:

Unlike Carlson, Tim Russert is the Big Guy of the American press corps. He’s the one they all look up to and admire, the one they invariably point to as proof that tough, adversarial journalism is alive and well in the U.S. Yet that’s the same Tim Russert who admitted under oath that — even with no “off the record” agreement — all of his conversations with government officials are presumptively confidential, and he never reports anything unless they give him explicit permission in advance to do so.

But it was Father’s Day, and Tim Russert had his, Big Russ, a father he even wrote a book about. He also had a son he was very proud of. I suppose I don’t have the heart to go all in on a critique of Russert. Russert was a son and a father, and as Dick Polman notes, he worked too hard giving us, what? You answer. Again, I haven’t the heart today.

Barack Obama made news as well, lecturing at a pupit in Chicago about absentee fathers in the African American community and how they must take charge of their responsibilities. Most of us, as did those in his audience, will say that it is ballsy for Obama to speak so truthfully to African Americans about the failures of fathers in their community. sure, there are tons of sociological reasons for those absentee fathers in the African American community, but Obama still deserves some praise for putting it out there, critiquing his most steadfast constituency. Still, I’m willing to bet that FauxNews figures out a way to claim this as another example of elitism on Obama’s part.

And then there is the soldier, a reservist who is risking much in his refusal to answer his callup for duty in Iraq. Matthis Chiroux is that soldier, and he made his announcement with his father in attendance. Here it is from Yahoo News:

“Tonight at midnight, I may face further action from the army for refusing to reactivate to participate in the Iraq occupation,” Chiroux told reporters in Washington.

“I stand here today in defense of those who have been stripped of their voices in this occupation, the warriors of this nation…”, Chiroux read from a statement as his father Rob, who had travelled to Washington from Alabama to support his son on Father’s Day, stood beside him.

Perhaps the words of Matthis’ father are more important, and show us just what the Bush Administration has brought us with this failed War in Iraq:

Matthis’ father Rob, a rocket scientist who lives in the army town of Huntsville, Alabama, said mobilizing IRR members was a form of back-door draft.

“If our country is in such a dire emergency that we need to conscript manpower, congress has to vote to reinstate the draft,” the elder Chiroux told AFP.

“But they won’t do that because if congress said we need to bring back the general draft, the war in Iraq would be resolved very quickly,” he said.

“Moms and dads, who represent millions and millions of voters, would say: wait a minute — you want to draft my kid? Iraq’s got to stop.”

Maybe that’s what a couple hundred thousand more fathers should do, stand up for their sons and how the Bush government is coercing their service. It I wish luck to Matthis Chiroux and his father, but fully expect the Bush government to come after Matthis with chains. That’s something we can think about as we work towards electing Barack Obama — John McCain would maintain that War in Iraq. More sons will die for that war under McCain.

Finally, there is the mundane and everyday concerning fathers. It is the story of little Mykah Ross, a little African American boy whose father Charlie died in the kind of inner city violence that sometimes makes boys fatherless. Violence in big cities has grown under the Bush Administration. Charlie was a victim to it, and Mykah was a more important victim, a little boy who could not get over that loss. But he is getting over it, thanks to a volunteer program staffed by ordinary (not the football stars) employees of my Philadelphia Eagles. They are the village we need to overcome the fatherhood problems we have in all of America, not just in African American neighborhoods. And we need more volunteer programs of this kind. We cannot solve problems merely with speeches by Barack Obama, but we need corporations to step up with similar programs to that run by Eagles Youth Partnership. I’ll be doing my part, signing up and volunteering as a literacy coach.