Why Fathers Pray For Their Daughters

From the author of SC&A:

I just read When Wanting To Be Accepted Becomes Overwhelming, by the fine blogger Sister Toljah. I am heartbroken.

She recounts the story of a young girl who takes her own life because

…after being duped and ridiculed online by two people in her neighborhood who were posing as a young boy who was supposedly interested in her.

The two people were a former friend of hers …. and that friend’s mother.

The girl was 13 years old.

There can be no father who has not felt a knife thrust into his own heart after reading the story. Sister Toljah’s own commentary is a look behind the curtain.

I’m sure the mother and daughter who set up this fake “Josh Evans” online ID didn’t intend to cause Megan to take her own life, but nevertheless it’s a reminder of how utterly vicious people can be without actually committing a crime, and how sometimes that viciousness can lead to disastrous consequences, especially when the objects of the invective are teen-aged kids, kids who are at that awkward stage in life where they are struggling to find their way, and wanting desperately to be accepted…

This story has stayed with me since I read it, primarily because Megan Meir reminded me of myself when I was her age. She was short, struggling with her looks and self-esteem, frequently down, and wanted so very much for people to like her…

…but the damage to my self-worth had been done. It took me years and years to get to a point where I didn’t question and obsess over the rightness or wrongness of my every move every single day. It still happens, but much less than it used to.

After reading Sistah Toljah’s post, I could not help but wonder what my daughter really thinks. I know her mentors are more like Sistah Toljah as opposed to the mother who helped her daughter, but the world is a scary place. Father’s obsess about those kind of things.

My daughter is growing up. I wrote:

My daughter has gone from playing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star to playing Chopin.

My little girl no longer bangs at the keyboard, legs dangling from the piano bench, glaring, focusing and concentrating with her tongue unconsciously sticking out, determined to hit every note. Now, my daughter sits at the piano, poised and with unconscious gracefulness and plays Chopin, with her eyes closed, transported to another place where she finds peace, beauty and meaning.

“Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard?” she asks. “Can you feel the music, daddy?“…

Fathers of daughters develop a secret and special ability to see the young woman before them and the little girl that adored them, at the same time. We don’t talk about that, ever, because fathers need to believe that gift is special, unique to them. Fathers know that gift comes about as a result of loving their daughters with every single fiber of their being.

Every father in the world will tell you they wished with all their hearts Megan Meier had turned to them for comfort and guidance. Every father in the world would have dropped whatever he was doing to come to the aid of Megan Meier. Every father in the world is haunted because they did not hear Megan Meier’s cry. Every father in the world fears looking into the eyes of Megan Meier’s parents.

I cannot imagine a world in which a young woman in pain believes she has nowhere to turn, because I have a daughter.

Read Sistah Toljah’s post.

Benazir Bhutto, AQ Khan And Potaoes

In a recent interview with Agence France Presse (AFP), Benazir Bhutto continues the performance of a lifetime as she impersonates a democracy and freedom loving political figure.

Bhutto said that under President Musharraf, Pakistan had become “the petri dish of the international extremist movement” and that only a new government with broad support could root out Islamic militancy.

Fighting the Taliban and Al-Qaeda “requires a national effort that can only flow from legitimate elections,” she said on Washington’s Capitol Hill, appealing to the United States to drop its deep-pocketed backing for Musharraf.

This breathtaking drivel comes from the ‘leader’ of one of only three states that not only recognized the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, but in fact, enabled that regime and turned a blind eye to a growing fundamentalist threat in her native Pakistan. Now the chickens are coming home to roost. Those fundamentalists, now great in number, organized and wielding political power have her in their sights. Her situation is not unlike that of the Palestinians under Arafat. Sick and tired of the corruption, deceit and highhandedness, a many fundamentalists view Bhutto with contempt. Like many Palestinians, that contempt will manifest itself at the ballot box. They will vote for anyone other than Bhutto, in the same way many Palestinians voted for Hamas as a protest voice against Arafat’s Fatah movement.

There are other disturbing considerations.

Bhutto also said Tuesday that if returned to power, she would allow UN inspectors but not Western powers to question Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb.

UN inspectors have a demonstrated record of ineffectiveness. Why hamstring western nations and prevent access to AQ Khan, the man who gave away much of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program to despotic and dysfunctional regimes, including Libya, Iran and North Korea?

It is true that Pervez Musharraff has not allowed western governments access to question AQ Khan, but it is also true that he remains under a virtual house arrest in Pakistan. Bhutto’s only definitive statement on AQ Khan is protective in nature only and specifically states that only the bumbling IAEA will have access to Khan.

Given Bhutto’s track record of corruption (documented in small part here and here), her potential access to a nuclear weapons program and technology ought to scare the hell out of any sane person. By contrast, AQ Khan is small potatoes.