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as What Wives Wish Their Husbands Knew About Women, Straight Talk to Men and Their Wives, and so forth in support of outdated sex roles between men and women.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.

No, It's Not "Teaching" or "Schooling:

Sexists like Dr. James Dobson are all giddy about COVID-19 because this is the perfect excuse for unqualified people to resort to "homeschooling," which is bullshit if there ever was one.


Parents who are not qualified teachers are not "educating" their children. Just because you pop a baby out doesn't qualify you to teach. I can't begin to tell you how many cases of kids who return to public school after being "homeschooled" that we REAL educators have to "fix" because parents don't know what they are doing or they think "anybody can teach," which is apparently Dr. Dobson's view, too. It is an insult to the four MILLION teachers in the United States who are professionals and actually have the training to teach and assess children. Teaching is for professionals, not for amateurs. I will call you home "teachers" real teachers the day you can go into a classroom of 25 or 30 kids, all with different backgrounds and abilities, and can actually do the job. You can't because you are not a teacher or "schooling" your kids. You are resorting to canned curriculum and one-on-one tutoring, which is a far cry from what real teachers do. This situation with COVID-19 is a temporary issue. The bigger issues are the sexism involved in the advocacy of "homeschooling" because mothers are expected to do it and the harm these parents are doing to children because they haven't a clue what they are doing. It is the "feminine mystique" gone completely off the rails for the 21st century in an attempt by Dr. Dobson and his ilk to chain women to the home by lying to them that raising children is identical to "teaching" them. They aren't-they are completely separate. Would Dr. Dobson advocate for decreasing qualifications to be a psychologist? Of course he wouldn't because not only he is a MAN but he knows people off the street aren't qualified to do it. Same is true with teachers.

It is at bottom sexism and the desire by these men to continue to force women into subservience.  It is obvious once you scratch the surface.  It isn't about "education" at all or even about sheltering children from the realities of the real world.  It is about forcing women back into the home by taking advantage of a tragic pandemic.  Men are not considered "home educators"--only women, and that tells you all you need to know about the motive here.

I Always Wanted to See This

and I didn't when it first came out. This was the last interview serial killer Ted Bundy gave before being executed in 1989. His interview was with Focus on the Family head Dr. James Dobson, now retired from the outfit.

The complete broadcast is here. However, embedding is disabled. A slightly edited version is this one:



It's interesting to see what made this man "tick" by watching him. He still wanted to shift the blame for his actions, this time to violent porn, of which I am NOT a fan, in order to manipulate Dobson. Some cynics will say Dobson was the more manipulative of the two as he profited from the interview and got Bundy to say what he wanted to hear in order to sell videos and contribute money to HIS cause. Bundy was a sociopath or psychopath to the end, but yet there are hints of honesty here, especially with regard to the compulsion to kill. It's an addiction, as Bundy noted. Now it's debatable porn sent him over the edge, but something the hell did, and it most likely had to do with his rage toward women starting from a very early age. Whether the alcohol helped send him over the edge is also debatable.

Miscellaneous

In celebration of Halloween, evangelist and family values czar James Dobson is calling it quits from his Focus on the Family radio program and organization, both of which he founded some 30 years ago.

He won't say he's retired, though.
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A new biography is out about screenwriter and philosophical nutjob Ayn Rand, complete with details of her messy relationship with "protege" Nathaniel Branden, in case anybody is interested.
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Campaign Endorsements

After saying forever he would never back McCain, religious right wacko James Dobson says he may change his mind. He is taking the evil of two lessers approach to this year's election.
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Campaign Notes.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has come out and endorsed Hillary Clinton for president.
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Slowly but surely, Mike Huckabee's campaign is coming to life.

Is he Dobson's choice?

Perhaps not.

In any case, Huckabee WILL be on the GOP ticket. Take that to the bank.
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Still More Campaign Notes.

The Republicans have candidates this election cycle who are not worth writing home about.

But then again our dictator wasn't any great shakes to tell Ma about, either, yet he still managed to get two presidential elections stolen for him.

Never count the Republicans out. Democrats would be making a huge mistake by doing so.
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If Hillary Clinton becomes the nominee, she might not be so unelectable after all.

She could pull off what her husband did twice and win a plurality of the vote.

I suspect in the end there will be no radical right third party effort except on the fringe.
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John Edwards suggests voters ignore the polls and the punditocracy writing Edwards off because he took public financing.

It's so stupid, the argument against candidates taking public financing, it isn't funny.

Even funnier is the fact Edwards to date has spent only around $20,000 on television ads in Iowa compared with literally millions being spent by the so-called frontrunners. And yet the three are in a statistical dead heat.
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Campaign Notes.

Famed theocrat James Dobson simply isn't impressed with Fred Thompson and refuses to support him.

That might be good news for the former senator.
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Newt the Coot cleaned the wax out of his ears when he sat down to an interview with Christofascist James Dobson, and, in a brazen attempt to court the religious right, admitted he cheated on his first and second wives before settling down to his much-younger third wife.

Wife number one, Jackie, was actually his high school teacher and a few years older than he when they got married ages ago. They had a couple of daughters and lived a normal life until Newt went to Congress and discovered he was missing out on all of the debauchery for which D.C. is noted. When Jackie was sick in the hospital suffering from uterine cancer, Newt displayed his devotion to her by presenting her with divorce papers, I believe. He dumped her for wife number two, Marianne, who was quite a bit younger than Newt, but after more than a decade putting up with him (and mostly living in Ohio pursuing her own career), she wasn't young enough. When she was gone, old Newt was carrying on with other women, and, as David Corn so memorably put it in another Salon article, even was screwing women in the back seat of his green Mustang in the House parking garage. The car was bumping up and down, and the windows were all fogged up. "When this car's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin'" is how I remember it.

But no matter. He married his third wife, and he's promised he will be a great example for others to follow, just as Rudy Giuliani is such a great role model for family values. (AP)