New York Times:
It was the first day of school, and distance not withstanding, 9-year-old Baylee Smith wanted to take a picture with her father, Mark, who is stationed with a National Guard unit in Afghanistan. Real daddy was not available, but Sergeant Smith’s doppelgänger was.
“Where’s Flat Daddy?” an excited Baylee asked as her stepmother, Jennifer Smith, pulled a large cardboard picture of Sergeant Smith, in his uniform, out of her Chevy Blazer and propped him on the bumper. The two, along with Ms. Smith’s young sons, Alec and Derek, posed for a picture with their Flat Daddy, who promptly fell down.
“Stop it Dad, that’s not funny. It’s not a joke,” Baylee said with a laugh.
The Maine National Guard is giving life-size from-the-waist-up pictures of soldiers to the families of deployed guard members. Guard officials and families say the cutouts, known as Flat Daddies or Flat Soldiers, connect families with a relative who is thousands of miles away. The Flat Daddies are toted everywhere from soccer practice to coffee shops to weddings.
In other words, there's a big old honkin' hole in these people's lives and they need something -- anything -- to fill it. The right keeps saying that a 'real' parents consist of a man and a woman. And here we are with policies designed by the right that are reducing families to a spouse and a scarecrow.
How healthy can this be? How many children will always remember a dead parent as a cardboard cutout and a grave occupied by a stranger?
I've got a better solution than scarecrow parents -- stop the damned war.
(h/t Huff Po)
Tags: news politics Iraq Afghanistan Military Bush Rumsfeld war morons
