DADWAGON

The Washington Post has shuttered the On Parenting blog. Blogger Brian Reid, in the course of four years of writing posts that he says came out to twice the length of the Great Gatsby, announced his departure on Monday.

Of course, WaPo has a history of sheepish blog-kills. A few years back its popular Post.blog was killed, of all things, for the volume of hateful comments (if that was what decided a blog’s fate, TIME’s delightfully vicious Swampland, where my first post was greeted with a chorus of  ‘who the hell are you’, would have died a thousand deaths by now). More recently, liberal blogger Dan Froomkin’s departure left him “terribly disappointed” and left Andrew Sullivan claiming that Froomkin’s opposition to torture might have cost him his job.

Does anyone know what happened over at On Parenting? Did Brian take a firm stance against torturing children?

The good news is that he will be back doing his own thing over at Rebeldad. As Mainstream Media types ourselves, we look forward to what he’ll do now that the corporate shackles are off.

Ah, Brooklyn: where it’s expensive; where there’s no parking; where it’s nasty full of hipsters and their statement facial hair; where we all have dog envy; where the grocery store sells yogurt that finds it necessary to bill itself as “artisanal,” “organic,” and from “Vermont,” all in one label; where astroturf is a symbol of class warfare; where you have to know from ice cubes in your $20 cocktail; where a woman I met at a bar can tell me that my son might miss out on Harvard (say it with awe) because–at three–I haven’t had him tested for a gifted and talented public school program; where, where, where….

You simply have to love it, or you wouldn’t live here (although federal law requires all mid-career writers to live in Brooklyn or below 14th street in Manhattan. It’s true–look it up if you don’t believe me).

One nice thing about Brooklyn, however, is that we got kids. Lots of em. Loads of babies and toddlers and tots and teens of all shapes, sizes, colors, and flavors of Ipod worship. We raise ’em, we hang out with them, we teach them about good cheese, we take them to our yuppie parks to sled.

We also take our kids around on the street, in big, expensive, obnoxious strollers, and occasionally, some of us don’t strap our little one in tightly, or in some cases, at all. And when said stroller hits an icy patch or a big bump in the sidewalk, and the kid goes flying and bangs her cute little head on the sidewalk and starts crying, and you see the mom freaking out, it’s okay, we’ve all been there because we all have kids, and the mom is grateful that you stopped to help, and she smiles, and the kid is all right, and the sun is shining, and it’s Brooklyn and we’re all lucky as hell to live here and the public schools, well, they are improving, or so they say.

Note to my ex-wife: I always strap JP securely into the stroller. Any indication that I had failed to do so was in jest.

Thanks to the gurus at the Googleplex, we are alerted constantly to the highs and lows of fatherhood across the world. Actually, it’s mostly lows, because Google alerts often seems like the world’s most sophisticated Police Blotter. Let’s dig in to this week’s highlights:

• In Louisiana, a dad and his 12-year-old daughter decided to play a practical joke on fellow motorists. What says Happy 2010 more than cruising the interstate with your teenage daughter bound and gagged with duct tape? Apparently New York’s If You See Something, Say Something campaign made it down to the Bayou, because multiple motorists called in a kidnapping in progress. Dad was arrested, daughter cited and released.

• There was an equal lack of understanding for this creative dad from Georgia, who gave his young children homemade tattoos of a cross, using a guitar string as a needle, on their hands. “I mean, we didn’t even break the skin barely, OK?” the mom says in his defense. They, too, face charges, although it’s clear to us that they were just following the ancient faith of the tattoo-crazy Christian Copts in Egypt.

• From tats to tases: enterprising father Jorge Garcia of Deltona, Fla., was involved in a pre-dawn dustup with the cops, who were advancing on him with tasers drawn. What to do? He grabbed the infant in the seat next to him, held the baby in front of his chest, and reportedly told officers multiple times, “Tase the baby, Tase the baby”. If DadWagon had a dollar for each time we’ve said that around the house…

• This is a great season for sports, what with Boise State laying the wood on TCU, the Nets winning a couple games, and the entire continent eagerly awaiting the Scotties Tournament of Hearts Womens Curling Championship in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. So sports dads are getting a lot of attention. We salute the fatherly devotion of Heisman winner Mark Ingram’s dad, who was a fine NFL receiver in his day, but unfortunately is spending this bowl season in a jail in Queens after having skipped bail to watch his son play. Boxing champ Miguel Cotto’s dad, who helped convince the ref to stop the fight last year when PacMan Pacquaio was whupping Cotto, died this weekend after waiting two hours for an ambulance in Caguas, Puerto Rico. Then, there are the shaped-by-their-dad sports profiles: Texas football coach Mack Brown’s pop was apparently one tough sumbitch, while Eagles phenom DeSean Jackson’s late father was “all out, all the time”.

• Is it even worth mentioning the varied and cruel acts of violence carried out by dads around the world? A Pennsylvania dad attacked his 12-year-old son with a knife because of an ice cream spill, an Indian man immolated his daughters because their cell phones wouldn’t stop ringing. A Florida dad got drunk on New Year’s and let his 2-year-old fall into a firepit. Mom, luckily, pulled the boy out with only moderate burns. Perhaps a collective New Year’s Resolution for dads is in order: Stop killing (or trying to kill) your children. Is that too much to ask?

With The Road, the cinematic adaptation of the Cormac McCarthy novel, now in movie theaters, a new audience is getting exposed to the nightmarish tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic landscape. At its core though, The Road is about the heartwarming relationship between a father, the Man, and his son, the Boy, as they fight off cold, starvation, ash storms, and roving cannibals. DadWagon recently caught up with the Man to ask him about fatherhood in this not-so-brave new world.

A lot of our readers are wondering: Just as civilization was breaking down, you decided to have a child—was that the right decision to make?

If he is not the word of God God never spoke.

Take us through a typical day on “the Road.”

No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.

What do you see as your primary responsibility as a father?

This is my child. I wash a dead man’s brains out of his hair. That is my job.

Do you consider yourself brave?

Just medium.

What’s the bravest thing you’ve done?

Getting up this morning.

Is there anything you can’t do?

I can’t hold my son dead in my arms. I thought I could but I can’t.

What do you remember of life before the apocalypse?

Each memory recalled must do some violence to its origins. As in a party game. Say the word and pass it on. So be sparing. What you alter in the remembering has yet a reality, known or not.

Do you have nightmares, or do you dream of a better future for your son?

When your dreams are of some world that never was or of some world that never will be and you are happy again then you will have given up. Do you understand?

Definitely. What do you think your father would say of your parenting skills?

Do you think your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.

Have you and the Boy established any fun traditions?

All of this like some ancient anointing. So be it. Evoke the forms. Where you’ve nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.

Have you made any friends along the Road?

On this road there are no godspoke men. They are gone and I am left and they have taken with them their world. Query: How does the never to be differ from what never was?

Surely the Boy needs more companionship. Have you considered a pet?

The dog that he remembers followed us for two days. I tried to coax it to come but it would not. I made a noose of wire to catch it. There were three cartridges in the pistol. None to spare. She walked away down the road. The boy looked after her and then he looked at me and then he looked at the dog and he began to cry and to beg for the dog’s life and I promised I would not hurt the dog. A trellis of a dog with the hide stretched over it. The next day it was gone. That is the dog he remembers. He doesn’t remember any little boys.

I understand the Boy’s mother killed herself. If you could address her now, what would you say?

Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God. Oh God.

Well, that about does it. Thank you for joining us, the Man.

Look around you. There is no prophet in the earth’s long chronicle who’s not honored here today. Whatever form you spoke of you were right.