Worst American Birthdays, vol. XII
By James Clayton Dobson takes another step toward God’s mysterious embrace today, as the nation’s informal Guardian of Decency turns 71 years old.
Hard though it may be to believe, Dobson was once a “sassy” child who by his own account needed to be taken down a notch and shown a proper respect for familial authority. In his 1977 guide for confused parents, Dare to Discipline, Dobson fondly recalls the day his mother flailed him with her undergarments:
She knew that backtalk and “lip” are the child’s most potent weapons of defiance and they must be discouraged. I learned very early that if I was going to launch a flippant attack on her, I had better be standing at least ten or twelve feet away. This distance was necessary to avoid being hit with whatever she could get in her hands. On one occasion she cracked me with a shoe; at other times she used a handy belt. The day I learned the importance of staying out of reach shines like a neon light in my mind. I made the costly mistake of “sassing” her when I was about four feet away. She wheeled around to grab something with which to hit me, and her hand landed on a girdle. She drew back and swung that abominable garment in my direction, and I can still hear it whistling through the air. The intended blow caught me across the chest, followed by a multitude of straps and buckles, wrapping themselves around my mid-section. She gave me an entire thrashing with one massive blow!
Seeing the light of discipline through his own tears, Dobson was hooked. Indeed, throughout his life he has argued that Christian parents should spare neither rod nor shoe nor girdle in the cause of raising obedient tots. Because the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child does not acknowledge the liberty of parents to beat the shit out of their kids, Dobson — like most conservatives — has consistently opposed any effort by the U.S. to ratify it. Among the nations of the world, only Somalia has chosen to stand strong with America and James Dobson by refusing to absorb at least some parts of the Convention into its domestic law.
By various turns a psychologist and self-proclaimed Christian minister, Dobson has transformed himself into one of the most powerful political figures in recent American history. From his humble Louisiana origins, Dobson received a PhD in child development in 1967 and navigated his way to a pediatrics professorship at the University of Southern California, where he worked for more than a decade before turning his attention to the cause of public righteousness. Focus on the Family, his Colorado-based juggernaut, began dispensing Dobson’s revelations to a world hungry for the reassertion of patriarchal order. The Family Research Council, founded in 1981 as a division of FOF, peddled bogus “pro-family” social science to lawmakers seeking to thwart the march of gay rights, abortion, and family planning and sex education in the schools. Dobson has also taken strong stands against Bob the Builder, SpongeBob SquarePants, and the Muppets. His immense scientific training also leads him to believe that global warming is a hoax.
Two parts “Dr. Phil” McGraw, two parts Jim Jones, and one part John Rockefeller, James Dobson turned FOF into the largest conservative organization in the world. Dobson advised Ronald Reagan’s administration on issues of juvenile delinquency and tax reform — the latter of which no doubt worked to FOF’s advantage as it collected hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and donations from all over the planet. By the late 1990s, Congressional Republicans were smearing themselves with holy oils cold-pressed pressed from Dobson’s ideological olive groves; Dobson’s 2004 stadium rallies and near-daily radio homilies on behalf of George W. Bush helped the incumbent prevail in the presidential election.