The Good Die Young: James Dobson (1936-2025)

 One of the leading figures of the religious right of the past fifty years, Dr. James Dobson, 89, reportedly died today.  No cause of death was given.  He had once been a professor at USC, which was his alma mater (M.A., Ph.D.) for 14 years until his successful books and especially his political interests forced him to pack it in in academia.  While Dobson was teaching at USC, he was said to have been quite upset with the hippies and the counterculture (he was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, as an only child and had a strict, Nazarene upbringing).  He thought people like Dr. Benjamin Spock were largely responsible for the rise in "rebellious" youth.  However, Dobson didn't sit home and stew over it

What he decided to do was write books that were almost the complete opposite of what Spock was saying.  He tapped into a market of overwhelmed and baffled "evangelical" parents who didn't have a clue as to how to raise children.  He came up with books such as Dare to Discipline and The Strong-Willed Child, books that were big on corporal punishment, and, with the latter book, infamous for a passage where Dobson was bragging about beating his poor dachshund.  He had books about marriage such as What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, and so forth in support of outdated sex roles between men and women.  These books, which never went out of print, sold by the hundreds of thousands if not millions.  Millions of people raised their kids on these books, and they proved to be a disaster for families.

Those books were just stepping stones to what Dobson was REALLY interested in, and that was partisan politics.  He founded Focus on the Family in 1977, ostensibly to help preserve the family and help with families and marriages in crisis,  but it was really a political action committee that was tax exempt because of the religious trappings.  He began to hobnob with the movers and shakers of the GOP including Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, although by the time he hooked up with Trump and his malignant MAGAs, Dobson already had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel.  He lived long enough to gloat over the Dobbs decision on abortion although he would not stick around long enough to see people far worse than he ever was trying to destroy all of women's rights without embarrassment.

In the past couple of years, Dobson began scaling back his appearances on his "Family Talk" radio program/podcast and turned more of the hosting duties to people like Gary Bauer and Michele Bachmann.  About the only time he would ever "appear" on recent podcasts/broadcasts was through old programs he made years ago.  It was clear the end was near.

NYT obit:

James Clayton Dobson Jr. was born in Shreveport, La., on April 21, 1936, the only child of James and Myrtle (Dillingham) Dobson.

He was the son, grandson and great-grandson of Church of the Nazarene ministers. The family avoided dancing and movies. His father, who never attended college, was a traveling evangelist, primarily in the Southwest, and young James lived mostly with his mother in Bethany, Okla., and graduated from San Benito High School, in San Benito, Texas, in 1954.

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Fun fact:  "Jimmy" Dobson, as he was known in high school, can be found in the 1954 yearbook of San Benito High School.  As a senior, "Jimmy" was involved in tennis and the campus newspaper.